Federation account allocation committee (FAAC) says it shared N1,088.783 trillion with the three tiers of government in November 2023.

FAAC disclosed this in a communique issued at the end of its meeting in Abuja on Friday.

The amount disbursed in November represents an increase of N181.82 billion compared to October’s allocation of N906.955 billion.

According to the communique, a total revenue of N1.620 trillion was earned in November 2023. 

Out of the gross revenue, the deduction for the cost of collection was N60.960 billion; while total transfers, interventions and refunds were N470.592 billion.  

Meanwhile, from the N1.088 trillion distributable revenue, N376.306 billion was for statutory revenue, value-added tax (VAT) revenue was N335.656 billion, electronic money transfer levy (EMTL) revenue was N11.952 billion and exchange difference revenue was N364.869 billion.  

In the communique, the breakdown of the N1.088 allocation showed that the federal government received N402.867 billion, the states received N351.697 billion, local governments received N258.810 billion, while oil-producing states received N75.410 billion as 13 percent derivation.

FAAC said from the N376.306 billion distributable statutory revenue, the federal government received N174.908 billion, states received N88.716 billion and local government councils received N68.396 billion. 

The committee added that N44.286 billion was shared with the benefiting states as 13 percent derivation revenue.

FAAC also said from the distributable VAT of N335.656 billion, FG got N50.348 billion, states received N167.828 billion, while local governments received N117.480 billion.

N11.952 billion from the EMTL, according to FAAC, was distributed to the federal government (N1.793 billion), states (N5.976 billion), and local governments (N4.183 billion).

In addition, the committee said gross statutory revenue received for the month was N882.561 billion, with various taxes such as company income tax, excise duty, petroleum profit tax, and VAT significantly increased.

FAAC said the balance in the excess crude account remained at $473.754 million.

 

The Cable

Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) says there is a high level of corruption across various sectors in the three arms of government and private sector.

The Provost of the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria, Tunde Babawale, a professor, said this at the validation meeting of the Nigeria Corruption Index (NCI) Survey in Abuja

Babawale said that the findings put corruption level within the legislative, judicial, and executive arms of government and private sector at 42 per cent between 2022 and 2023.

”All the sectors have been found culpable and found to be highly corrupt, the legislature, the judiciary and the executive, all of them have been found to be corrupt

”Although at the level of the state, the score differs from one state to the other, but the bottom line is that there is an overall score that we found is that over 42 per cent in our own scale is highly corrupt for the entire country.”

According to him, it is observed that corruption has become so pervasive that Nigerians need to embark on a change of attitude, change of mindset and change of behaviour.

“Meaning that people must begin to develop a high intolerance level for corruption as we are now, there is a high level of tolerance for corruption in the country.

“And, they don’t see it as a very scandalous and shocking development as it used to be in the past. We should begin to train the youth and even the old on how to develop this anti-corruption antigen,” he said.

He explained that the validation meeting was for a national survey that was carried out in 2022 which was called the Nigerian Corruption Index (NCI).

According to him, the NCI is to survey the extent of grand corruption in Nigeria, to look at the various sectors that are mostly affected by corruption as well as overall Nigerian thought in corruption.

He said the NCI focused on corruption in high places, especially the three arms of government as well as the private sector.

He noted that there had been other surveys on corruption by the National Bureau of Statistics and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime which were largely based on perception devoted to identifying the problem relating to petty corruption.

He said: “The difference in what we are doing is that we are surveying the impact of the effect of grand corruption and we are also looking at it from the perspective of different sectors of society, the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, as well as the sub-national government.

“So, the thinking that it is better for us to talk about grand corruption because of the greatest impact on living conditions of Nigerians when policemen collect bribes on the roadside – that has effects, but not as much as somebody stealing N109 billion.

”So, we want to weigh the impact of such on society, how it differs from one sector to the other, and the ultimate objective is also to ensure that we are able to advise the government on policies that should be put in place in order to develop anti-corruption initiatives and interventions.”

Roles of private sector

He expressed concerns on the findings of the NCI which discovered that people had trivialised corruption, and that the private sector fuelled corrupt practices in the public sector.

“One of the things we found out is that people have built the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility fraudulently. They have used it to disguise corruption and to also disguise the perpetration of corruption between the private and public sector.

“What I mean by that, private companies sometimes bring out the concept of corporate social responsibility as real corporate social responsibility, when what it is, is actually perpetuating corruption by giving officials bribes and even equipment.

“Some get cars bought for them and all of it we found out in the course of our survey. So, the government has to take a look at that. And purge it of all those impunity.”

Government action

He said there was the need for the government to look to legislative oversights sometimes used as a tool and channel for corruption.

“There is need for the government to purge the legislate oversight of a tendency by some people to also use it to take money from both the private and public sector.

“Some in the survey claimed that they sponsored trips for legislative oversights, which should not be, because the government made provision for that. That has to be addressed.

“And lastly, the overall thing that was observed is that corruption has become so pervasive that we need to embark on a change of attitude, change of mindset and change of behavior,” he said.

The NCI project

Elijah Okebukola, a profrssor and Lead researcher on the project Nigeria Corruption Index (NCI), noted that what the index did was that it measured corruption at different levels.

He said that their findings revealed that there was a high level of corruption at virtually every sphere of the sectors across Nigeria’s three arms of government.

“We have found that there is a high level of corruption at virtually every sphere of sectors in the country, in every level of government in all the spheres what index does is that it measures corruption at different levels,” he said.

Secretary of the commission, Clifford Oparaodu, represented by the Director of Legal, Henry Emorie, said that NCI was a tool aimed at helping the commission to better understand the fight against grand corruption in the country.

Oparaodu noted that everybody was experiencing the pervasive impact of corruption, which described corruption as a cankerworm that had insidiously woven its way into the fabric of the society, causing immeasurable damage to the nation.

While noting that the meeting would help to shed light on the area of concern as highlighted in the NCI data, he called for collective efforts to fight corruption in government and in the private sector.

 

NAN

The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a judgment by a lower court that dropped terrorism charges against separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu, ruling that trial on the charges should continue.

Kanu, a British citizen who leads the banned Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), disappeared from Nigeria after skipping bail in 2017. He was arrested in Kenya in 2021 and charged with terrorism.

Friday's ruling by Lawal Garba reinstating Kanu's seven-count terrorism trial at a lower federal court has effectively extended his detention, which began two years ago after his arrest.

"Even though illegalities were committed with the deployment of brutal force to invade his home after he was granted bail and the extraordinary rendition (from Kenya) into the country, there is no legislation yet that has ousted the jurisdiction of the court to try him," Garba said.

Kanu had denied the charges of terrorism and knowingly broadcasting falsehoods, which are linked to social media posts he issued between 2018 and last year.

Kanu's IPOB campaigns for the secession of a part of southeastern Nigeria where the majority belong to the Igbo ethnic group. Nigerian authorities have labeled IPOB a terrorist organisation.

An attempt by the southeastern region to secede as the Republic of Biafra in 1967 - the year that Kanu was born - triggered a three-year civil war that killed more than 1 million people.

 

Reuters

Israeli military says it mistakenly killed 3 Israeli hostages in battle-torn part of Gaza

Israeli troops mistakenly shot three hostages to death Friday in a battle-torn neighborhood of Gaza City, and an Israeli strike killed a Palestinian journalist in the south of the besieged territory, underscoring the ferocity of Israel’s ongoing onslaught.

The deaths were announced as a U.S. envoy tried to persuade the Israelis to scale back their campaign sooner rather than later.

The hostages were killed in the Gaza City area of Shijaiyah, where troops have been engaged in fierce fighting with Hamas militants in recent days. The soldiers mistakenly identified the three Israelis as a threat and opened fire on them, said the army’s chief spokesman, Daniel Hagari.

He said it was believed that the three had either fled their captors or been abandoned.

“Perhaps in the last few days, or over the past day, we still don’t know all the details, they reached this area,” Hagari said. He said the army expressed “deep sorrow” and was investigating.

Hamas and other militants abducted more than 240 people in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war, and the hostages’ plight has dominated public discourse in Israel ever since. Their families have led a powerful public campaign calling on the government to do more to bring them home.

Demonstrations in solidarity with the hostages and their families take place nearly every day. Late Friday, hundreds of protesters blocked Tel Aviv’s main highway in a spontaneous demonstration calling for the the hostages’ return.

Israeli political and military leaders often say freeing all the hostages is their top aim in the war alongside destroying Hamas.

Still, in seven weeks since ground troops pushed into northern Gaza, they have not rescued any hostages, though they freed one early in the conflict and have found the bodies of several others. Hamas released over 100 in swaps for Palestinian prisoners last month, and more than 130 are believed to still be in captivity.

The three hostages were identified as young men who had been abducted from Israeli communities near the Gaza border — Yotam Haim, 28, Samer Al-Talalka 25, and Alon Shamriz, 26.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called their deaths an “unbearable tragedy” and vowed to continue “with a supreme effort to return all the hostages home safely.”

In southern Gaza, the Al Jazeera television network said an Israeli strike Friday in the city of Khan Younis killed cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa and wounded its chief correspondent in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh. The two were reporting at a school that had been hit by an earlier airstrike when a drone launched a second strike, the network said.

Khan Younis has been the main target of Israel’s ground offensive in the south.

Speaking from a hospital bed, Dahdouh told the network that he managed to walk to an ambulance. But Abu Daqqa lay bleeding in the school and died hours later. An ambulance tried to reach the school to evacuate him but had to turn back because roads were blocked by the rubble of destroyed houses, it said.

Dahdouh, a veteran of covering Israel-Gaza wars whose wife and children were killed by an Israeli strike earlier in the war, was wounded by shrapnel in his right arm.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Abu Daqqa is the 64th journalist to be killed since the conflict erupted: 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese journalists.

Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told a General Assembly meeting on the war that Israel “targets those who could document (their) crimes and inform the world, the journalists.”

“We mourn one of those journalists, Samer Abu Daqqa, wounded in an Israeli drone strike and left to bleed to death for six hours while ambulances were prevented from reaching him,” Mansour said.

The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment about Abu Daqqa’s death.

Israel’s offensive has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. Displaced people have squeezed into shelters mainly in the south in a spiraling humanitarian crisis.

The offensive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its latest count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead in previous tallies.

While battered by the Israeli onslaught, Hamas has continued its attacks. On Friday it fired rockets from Gaza toward central Israel, setting off sirens in Jerusalem for the first time in weeks but causing no injuries. The group’s resilience called into question whether Israel can defeat it without wiping out the entire territory.

Israelis remain strongly supportive of the war and see it as necessary to prevent a repeat of the Hamas attack, in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. A total of 116 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive, which began Oct. 27.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has expressed unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties and its plans for the future of Gaza, but the White House continues to offer wholehearted support with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing.

Israeli airstrikes and tank shelling continued Friday, including in Khan Younis and in Rafah, which is one of the shrinking areas of tiny, densely populated Gaza to which Palestinian civilians have been told by Israel to evacuate. Details on many of the strikes could not be confirmed because communications services have been down across Gaza since late Thursday because of fighting.

In meetings with Israeli leaders on Thursday and Friday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan discussed a timetable for winding down the intense combat phase of the war.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Sullivan that it would take months to destroy Hamas, but he did not say whether his estimate referred to the current phase of heavy airstrikes and ground battles.

“There is no contradiction between saying the fight is going to take months and also saying that different phases will take place at different times over those months, including the transition from the high-intensity operations to more targeted operations,” Sullivan said Friday.

Sullivan also met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss Gaza’s postwar future. A senior U.S. official said one idea being floated is to bring back Palestinian security forces driven from their jobs in Gaza by Hamas in its 2007 takeover.

Any role for Palestinian security forces in Gaza is bound to elicit strong opposition from Israel, which seeks to maintain an open-ended security presence there. Netanyahu has said he will not allow a postwar foothold for the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The U.S. has said it eventually wants to see the West Bank and Gaza under a “ revitalized Palestinian Authority “ as a precursor to a Palestinian state — an idea soundly rejected by Netanyahu, who leads a right-wing government that is opposed to Palestinian statehood.

Palestinian officials have said they will consider a postwar role in Gaza only in the context of concrete U.S.-backed steps toward statehood.

In the meeting, Abbas called for an immediate cease-fire and ramped-up aid to Gaza, and emphasized that Gaza is an integral part of the Palestinian state, according to a statement from his office. It made no mention of conversations about postwar scenarios.

The 88-year-old Abbas is deeply unpopular, with a poll published Wednesday indicating close to 90% of Palestinians want him to resign. Meanwhile, Palestinian support for Hamas has tripled in the West Bank, with a small uptick in Gaza, according to the poll. Still, a majority of Palestinians do not back Hamas, according to the survey.

 

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Explosions resound in Kyiv, air defence units engage Russian drones

A series of explosions resounded throughout the Ukrainian capital early on Saturday as air defence units engaged Russian drones, Reuters witnesses said.

Explosions were reported on both banks of the Dnipro River that runs through the city.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or serious damage.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said anti-aircraft units went into action as groups of drones flew near the city. He said Russian forces were targeting areas near the city centre.

Anti-aircraft activity was heavy, he said, in Darnytskyi district on the east bank of the Dnipro and explosions also struck historic Podil on the opposite bank.

The Reuters witnesses reported loud blasts just after midnight. A new series of explosions over the next 45 minutes hit areas near Kyiv's central districts.

The witnesses said air raid sirens went off on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, but on the western bank police warned residents of the air raid through loudspeakers.

Authorities warned of possible missile attacks in areas of Kyiv region surrounding the capital, where explosions were also reported.

Air raid alerts remained in effect in a swathe of territory stretching through the country's central regions.

 

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

More Ukrainians willing to trade land for peace – poll

The share of Ukrainians willing to make territorial concessions to Russia in exchange for a peace deal has almost doubled since early summer, according to a new survey. However, a significant majority still believe that Ukraine can beat Russia on the battlefield with more Western weapons.

The poll, carried out by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology and released on Thursday, found that 19% of respondents would favor such a deal, up from 10% in May; 74% insisted that “under no circumstances should Ukraine give up any of its territories,” while 7% were unsure.

Of those who would back a peace deal, 71% said that Ukraine would be able to win a military victory if it received enough weapons from the West. Among those who oppose a deal, belief in the supremacy of Western arms was even stronger, with 93% agreeing that “with proper support from the West, Ukraine can achieve success.”

The pollsters surveyed 1,031 adults in Ukraine and in parts of four formerly Ukrainian regions claimed by Kiev.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has maintained since the start of the conflict that his military will retake all of Ukraine’s former territories, including Crimea. However, his long-promised summer counteroffensive failed to land Ukraine more than a handful of frontline villages and resulted in the loss of over 125,000 troops and 16,000 pieces of heavy equipment, according to the latest figures from the Russian Defense Ministry.

With the offensive halted, Zelensky is heading into 2024 with US Republicans blocking President Joe Biden’s promised $60 billion military aid package until at least mid-January. Existing US military aid is dwindling, and Zelensky has reportedly been instructed by the Pentagon to conserve what equipment remains.

Any future peace deal between Moscow and Kiev will be worse for Ukraine than the agreement proposed by the Kremlin before the conflict. In early 2022, Russia called on NATO to provide legally binding guarantees that Ukraine would not become a member of the bloc, and demanded that Ukraine abide by the 2015 Minsk agreements, which guaranteed autonomy to the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye have all now seceded from Ukraine and joined the Russian Federation, and the Kremlin maintains that any potential settlement must take these new “territorial realities” into account. Russian President Valdimir Putin said on Thursday that Moscow seeks the “de-Nazification and demilitarization of Ukraine” as well as “neutral status” for the country, and will not stop its military operation until these goals are achieved.

 

Reuters/RT

Russian hydrologist Alexander Tsvetkov was detained in February 2023, after an AI system determined that his face was a 55% match to the sketch of a murderer drawn 20 years ago by a witness.

Alexander Tsvetkov, a scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Inland Water Biology, has been living a nightmare for the past 10 months. He was removed from an airplane in February, following a work trip to Krasnoyarsk, and informed that he had been identified as the author of a series of murders over 20 years ago. Investigators claimed that he and his alleged accomplice killed at least two people in Moscow and the Moscow region in August 2002, ignoring the testimonies of multiple scientists that Tsvetkov had been with them at the time of the murders. The state’s smoking gun? An AI-powered system that found a 55% match between Tsvetkov and a sketch drawn by a witness over two decades ago.

The murders that Alexander Tsvetkov stands accused of occurred on August 2nd, 2002. First, a man with whom the suspects had allegedly drunk was killed after a quarrel. That same night, they robbed a 64-year-old woman, before finally attacking and killing another woman and her 90-year-old mother under the pretext of wanting to rent an apartment.

Tsvetkov’s alleged accomplice, who came forward and admitted to the murders, identified the scientist, but there were some issues with his testimony. He claimed that Alexander had been homeless with him in Moscow, drank alcohol, and “smoked half a pack of cigarettes a day”. Only Tsvetkov had never been homeless, didn’t drink, and hadn’t smoked a cigarette in his life because of lung problems. The accomplice also recalled that Tsvetkov had ring tattoos on his fingers and a Celtic pattern on his left hand. But the scientist’s relatives say that he never had any tattoos.

Many of Alexander’s scientist colleagues testified that he had been with them hundreds of kilometers away from the place where the murders had occurred, but authorities didn’t even consider them. The hydrologist was allegedly forced to write a confession that he later retracted, and he spent the last 10 months behind bars, while his family desperately tried to get him out.

According to several news sources, despite the mountain of evidence exonerating Tsvetkov in this murder case, Russian authorities chose to trust software powered by artificial intelligence. It had found that the hydrologist’s appearance matched that of the wanted killer about 55%, which was apparently enough to warrant his imprisonment.

Alexander Tsvetkov’s case has been making news headlines in Russia for months, and following a campaign asking for his release, as well as the rumored intervention of Vladimir Putin himself, the scientist was released earlier this month. However, the charges against him have not been dropped yet, so he is not out of the woods just yet.

Putin allegedly commented that “artificial intelligence is a complex topic, and if there are any failures in this area, they need to be analyzed and appropriate conclusions are drawn”.

 

Oddity Central

There are many environments where it would benefit you to check any people-pleasing tendencies at the door: work, romantic relationships, even friendships.

Holidays at your in-laws’ house is not one of them, says Sara Jane Ho, a Harvard-trained etiquette expert. Ho is the founder of the finishing school Institute Sarita, host of the Netflix show “Mind Your Manners,” and author of an upcoming book, also called “Mind Your Manners.”

If an in-law lobs a passive aggressive comment or a more direct insult your way, “just agree and play along,” she says. “Be very smiley.”

Let your partner take care of their parents

No matter how rude your spouse’s parents are, it’s not your job to reprimand them, Ho says. It’s your partner’s job.

“If you want to piss off your in-laws, let your spouse do it, not you,” she says.

In the moment you should only be agreeable. And you can let your spouse do the “dirty work” of explaining to their parents why certain comments are inappropriate, Ho says.

The same rule applies when your parents say something that makes your partner uncomfortable.

“You need to take care of your parents and they need to take care of their parents,” Ho says.

If you want to piss of your in-laws, let your spouse do it, not you.

Sara Jane Ho

etiquette expert

If it doesn’t make sense to smile and agree, Ho suggests just being silent.

“Oftentimes, I feel like when people are being rude the best thing is to just not say anything,” she told CNBC Make It earlier this year. “Let everyone wallow, and let them wallow in their misbehavior.” 

Don’t let the comments or questions sour your mood during the holiday.

“The greatest power is showing that the other person doesn’t have power over you,” Ho says.

 

CNBC

The World Bank says poverty rate in Nigeria has increased to 46 percent in 2023, representing 104 million poor Nigerians.

This was disclosed in World Bank’s Nigeria development update titled ‘Turning the corner: From reforms & renewed hope, to results,’ on Wednesday.

World Bank said Nigeria’s poverty rate rose from 40 percent in 2018 to 46 percent this year, as the number of poor people increased from 79 million to 104 million.

According to the report, more people have fallen below the poverty line due to sluggish growth and rising inflation.

“Sluggish growth and rising inflation have increased poverty from 40 percent in 2018 to 46 percent in 2023, pushing an additional 24 million people below the national poverty line,” World Bank said.

The report said the number of poor people in urban areas — more exposed to inflation — increased from 13 million to 20 million, while the number of poor people in rural areas rose to 84 million from from 67 million within the same period.

The reforms undertaken by President Bola Tinubu are ending petrol subsidy in May and devaluation of the naira by shifting to a unified, market-reflective foreign exchange (FX) rate in June.

World Bank said the reforms were essential for Nigeria to avoid a fiscal cliff and enable faster growth even though they brought difficult economic adjustments.

“Since May, retail gasoline prices have increased by an average of 163 percent and the Nigerian naira (N) has depreciated against the US dollar by 41 percent in the official market and by 30 percent in the parallel market,” World Bank said.

“The sharply higher price of gasoline and other imported goods has contributed to inflation, which increased from already elevated levels to 27.3 percent year-on-year (you) in October.”

On Wednesday, Alex Sienaert, the bank’s lead economist for Nigeria, said the country’s petrol should be priced at N750 per litre in filling stations based on present official exchange rate, not N650.

 

The Cable

When Sodiq Ajibade emerged from a Lagos pharmacy holding asthma medication, one drug on his prescription was missing because he did not have the money to buy it.

The price of some medicines has risen almost tenfold in Nigeria in the past few months, forcing patients like Ajibade to cut his dose or turn to traditional alternatives.

Pharmaceutical industry officials said the plunge in the value of the naira after the removal of currency controls in June has sent prices of new stocks rocketing.

British drug maker is moving from GSK-controlled local operating companies in Nigeria to a third-party direct distribution model. Some industry officials said this was also adding to woes, which GSK denied.

"I used to buy three medicines prescribed to me but now I have reduced to two, that is penicillin and aminophylline," said Ajibade.

Research firm Statista says only 3% of Nigerians have health insurance, meaning patients must find the money themselves to buy medication.

Nigeria's health ministry and National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control did not respond to requests for comment.

A GSK spokesperson said foreign currency shortages had affected GSK's ability to maintain consistent supply of medicines and vaccines in the market, leading to stockouts.

"The price increases we are seeing in Nigeria are not as a result of the decision to change the business model, and we regret that market forces outside our control have impacted the price of remaining stock in the market," the spokesperson said.

Cyril Usifoh, president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria said most drugs were imported while local makers relied on imports for the pharmaceutical ingredients to produce medicines.

The naira has lost half its value since June, raising prices of everything from pain killers to drugs for chronic disease.

A Seretide asthma inhaler manufactured by GSK, for example, cost up to N8,000 ($9.42) in April but now retails for up to N70,000. Antibiotics like augmentin cost as much as N25,000, up from N4,500 in July.

"I am particularly worried about things like cancer drugs, anti-hypertensive drugs, diabetic drugs. The price has been astronomical," said Usifoh.

"If you have two, three drugs on your prescription you may find that you don't have enough money to buy all of them."

Faced with such high costs, 43-year-old Kano farmer Ubaidullah Nuhu Yusuf said he was resorting to traditional cures.

"By boiling guava and pawpaw leaves .. and inhaling the steam, this has proven effective to curing malaria and typhoid since affording an injection and buying the drugs is a problem," he said.

 

Reuters

Israeli defense minister says war on Hamas will last months as US envoy discusses timetable

Israel’s defense minister said it will take months to destroy Hamas, predicting a drawn-out war even as his country and its top ally, the United States, face increasing international isolation and alarm over the devastation from the campaign in Gaza.

Yoav Gallant’s comments came as U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Israeli leaders to discuss a timetable for winding down major combat in Gaza. Israeli leaders repeated their determination to pursue the military assault until they crush the militant group for its Oct. 7 attack.

The exchange seemed to continue a dynamic the two allies have been locked in for weeks. President Joe Biden’s administration has shown unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties and its plans for the future of Gaza, but the White House continues to offer wholehearted support for Israel with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing.

“I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives,” Biden said Thursday when asked if he wants Israel to scale down its operations by the end of the month. “Not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful.”

Meanwhile, aside from small adjustments, Israel has changed little in what has been one of the 21st century’s most devastating military campaigns, with a mounting death toll.

The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mohammed Shtayyeh, said it’s time for the United States to deal more firmly with Israel, particularly on Washington’s calls for postwar negotiations for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Now that the United States has talked the talk, we want Washington to walk the walk,” Shtayyeh said in an interview with The Associated Press a day before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to meet with Sullivan in Ramallah.

The encounter is expected to focus, among other things, on Palestinian security forces and on revitalizing the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority, an autonomous government that administers pockets of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said a senior Biden administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.

The U.S. is exploring having security personnel associated with the Palestinian Authority help restore public safety in Gaza if Israel is successful in removing Hamas from control, the official said. Sullivan and other officials have discussed the prospect of having people associated with the Palestinian Authority security forces before Hamas took over the territory in 2007 serve as the “nucleus” of postwar peacekeeping in Gaza, the official said, adding that this was one idea of many being considered.

A deadly Hamas ambush on Israeli troops in Gaza City this week showed the group’s resilience and called into question whether Israel can defeat it without wiping out the entire territory. The campaign has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. Displaced people have squeezed into shelters mainly in the south in a spiraling humanitarian crisis.

Gallant said Hamas has been building military infrastructure in Gaza for more than a decade, “and it is not easy to destroy them. It will require a period of time.”

“It will last more than several months, but we will win, and we will destroy them,” he said.

After talks with Sullivan in Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he told Israel’s “American friends” that the country was “more determined than ever to continue fighting until Hamas is eliminated — until complete victory.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Sullivan talked with Netanyahu about moving to “lower intensity operations” sometime “in the near future.”

“But I don’t want to put a time stamp on it,” he said.

Earlier this week, Biden said Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing.” U.S. officials have been telling Israel for several weeks that the country’s window is closing for concluding major combat operations in Gaza without losing even more support internationally.

ARRESTS IN THE NORTH

The Palestinian telecommunications provider Paltel said Thursday that all communication services across Gaza were cut off due to ongoing fighting, severing the besieged territory from the outside world.

Heavy fighting has raged for days in areas around eastern Gaza City that were encircled earlier in the war. Tens of thousands of people remain in the north despite repeated evacuation orders, saying they don’t feel safe anywhere in Gaza or fear they may never be allowed to return to their homes if they leave.

The military released footage Thursday showing Israeli troops leading a line of dozens of men with their hands above their heads out of a damaged building it said was the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north Gaza town of Beit Lahia. Men brought out four assault rifles and set them on the street along with several ammunition magazines.

In the video, a commander said militants had fired on troops from the hospital and that troops were evacuating those inside while detaining suspected militants. Earlier in the week, a Gaza Health Ministry official said weapons inside belong to the hospital’s guards. Neither side’s claims could be independently verified.

Israeli troops have held the hospital since Tuesday, according to the Health Ministry and U.N. During that time, 70 medical workers and patients were detained, including the hospital director, they said.

Several thousand displaced people sheltering there were evacuated after the raid, and the remaining patients — including 12 children in intensive care — will be taken to Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the Health Ministry said.

Israel says it is rounding up men in northern Gaza as it searches for Hamas fighters, and recent videos have shown dozens of detained men stripped to their underwear, bound and blindfolded in the streets. Some released detainees have said they were beaten and denied food and water.

A HEAVY CIVILIAN TOLL

Israel’s air and ground assault, launched in response to Hamas’ unprecedented attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its latest count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead in previous tallies. Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble.

Multiple strikes hit Thursday in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, residents reported. After an early morning strike in Rafah, an Associated Press reporter saw 27 bodies brought into a local hospital Thursday.

One woman burst into tears after recognizing the body of her child.

“They were young people, children, displaced, all sitting at home,” Mervat Ashour said. “There were no resistance fighters, rockets or anything.”

New evacuation orders issued as troops pushed into Khan Younis earlier this month have pushed U.N.-run shelters to the breaking point and forced people to set up tent camps in even less hospitable areas. Heavy rain and cold in recent days have compounded their misery, swamping tents and forcing families to crowd around fires to keep warm.

Israel has sealed Gaza off to all but a trickle of humanitarian aid, and U.N. agencies have struggled to distribute it since the offensive expanded to the south because of fighting and road closures.

RISING SUPPORT FOR HAMAS

Israel might have hoped that the war and its hardships would turn Palestinians against Hamas, hastening its demise. But a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found 44% of respondents in the occupied West Bank said they supported Hamas, up from 12% in September. In Gaza, the militants enjoyed 42% support, up from 38% three months ago.

That’s still a minority in both territories. But even many Palestinians who do not share Hamas’ commitment to destroying Israel and oppose its attacks on civilians see it as resisting Israel’s decades-old occupation of lands they want for a future state.

Israelis, meanwhile, remain strongly supportive of the war and see it as necessary to prevent a repeat of Oct. 7, when Palestinian militants attacked communities across southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 hostage. A total of 116 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive, which began Oct. 27.

Around half the hostages, mostly women and children, were released last month during a weeklong cease-fire in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

 

AP