US vice president Kamala Harris has said there must be an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza as she called on the Israeli government to do more to increase the flow of aid, with “no excuses”.
Ms Harris said a six-week ceasefire would get Israeli hostages out and get a significant amount of aid into the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
She said people were “starving” and Israel needed to increase the flow of life-saving assistance to ease what she described as “inhumane” conditions and a “humanitarian catastrophe”. Her comments are among the strongest by a senior US official over the crisis.
The vice president also said there is a “deal on the table” and Hamas “needs to agree to that”.
“Let’s get a ceasefire. Let’s reunite the hostages with their families. And let’s provide immediate relief to the people of Gaza,” she said.
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Although a Hamas delegation is in Egypt for the latest truce talks, Israel has reportedly boycotted them.
Israeli media says it is because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not got an answer from Hamas on two questions – a list of hostages who are alive in Gaza and the number of Palestinian prisoners Hamas wants released in exchange for each hostage.
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2:43
Gaza: Doctors set up clinics in streets
Ms Harris is on Tuesday due to meet top Israeli politician Benny Gantz, who will also have talks in Washington with US secretary of state Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and Republican and Democratic members of Congress.
Although Mr Gantz is in Mr Netanyahu’s war cabinet, he is also a centrist political rival and is thought to have been rebuked by the Israeli prime minister for those planned discussions in America.
An official from Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party said Mr Gantz’s visit was not authorised by the leader.
And the PM had a “tough talk” with Mr Gantz about the trip and told him the country has “just one prime minister”, according to the official.
Mr Gantz had told the PM of his intention to travel to the US and to co-ordinate messaging with him, added an official.
US efforts in the region have increasingly been hampered by Mr Netanyahu’s hardline cabinet, which ultra-nationalists dominate. Mr Gantz’s more moderate National Unity party sometimes acts as a counterweight to the PM’s far-right allies.
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There are deep disagreements between Mr Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden over how to alleviate Palestinian suffering in Gaza and come up with a post-war vision for the enclave.
Speaking on Sunday in Selma, Alabama, Ms Harris said: “People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane and our common humanity compels us to act.
“The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses.”
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The unidentified official spoke to the Reuters news agency ahead of the talks in Cairo, billed as the final hurdle to a six-week ceasefire.
Earlier on Sunday, the US said a deal had already been “more or less accepted” by Israel and was waiting for approval by Hamas militants.
But after the Hamas delegation arrived, a Palestinian official said the deal was “not yet there”. Hamas also reportedly wanted a permanent ceasefire to be part of any deal.
The war started after Hamas launched a cross-border attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 others hostage.
Israel retaliated with strikes and a military ground assault in Gaza which have so far killed more than 30,000 people, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Around 80% of the population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, and UN agencies say hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.
More than 100 hostages in Gaza have been released.
Students, charged and released with a date in court, are here now to collect their belongings. They’re missing bags, belts, shoes, all lost in the chaos of the night before.
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From the very heart of the protest encampment, our cameras had captured the chaos.
Officers moving in. Tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse. Stun grenades to disorientate.
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They were scenes which have stirred an already fevered debate about Israel and Gaza, yes, but about much more too. About America, about policing, and about free speech too.
President Biden said yesterday: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest.”
‘Wrong’ say the protesters. Their movement, they say, is the very essence of protest; of civil disobedience which is threaded through US college campus history.
They reject any notion that they are threatening or violent. Yet the deeply divisive history of the Israel-Palestine conflict ensures that the beholder will so often be offended by the actions of the other side.
It was the students perceived antisemitism through their pro-Palestinian slogans which had drawn a group of pro-Israel protesters to the encampment earlier in the week.
The chaos of that night was reflected in a statement by the university’s student radio station which has been covering every twist.
“Counter protestors used bear mace, professional-grade fireworks and clubs to brutalize hundreds of our peers, UCLA turned a blind eye. Police were not called until hours into the onslaught and stood aside for over an hour as counter-protestors enacted racial, physical and chemical violence,” the statement from the UCLA Radio Managerial team said.
Watching the clear-up after the nighttime police sweep of the protesters I spotted two people embracing. A young man and an older woman.
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3:17
Professor recalls violent arrest at protest
It turned out to be a thread of history. One was a student who’d been arrested the night before.
The other was a student from a past time. Diane Salinger had been at New York’s Columbia University in 1968, at protests which now form a key chapter in American history.
“I’m so proud of these people here. I’m so proud,” she told me.
“You know the civil unrest of the students back in ’68 and it continued for several years, it actually changed the course of the Vietnam War and hopefully this is going to do the same thing.”
But then, back at the police station, a conversation that hints at the wider challenges for America.
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‘Tom’ is a protester who wanted to remain anonymous – a graduate who feels politically deserted in his own country. For him, no government is better than any on offer.
“The problem with our system is that we can’t rely on the police, we can’t rely on the military to keep us safe.
“When we need to make our voices heard, we need to make them heard, and the only way to do that without being repressed is by keeping each other safe and I think that last night and the last few months have really exemplified that,” he told me.
These protests are about more than Gaza. They are aligning a spectrum of dissent.
A scuba dive boat captain has been jailed for four years for criminal negligence over a fire that killed 34 people.
Captain Jerry Boylan was also sentenced to three years supervised release by a federal judge in Los Angeles, California.
The blaze on the vessel named Conception in September 2019 was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent American history.
Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer last year.
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Boylan – who is appealing – wrote: “While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no dispute that Mr Boylan did not intend for anyone to die.
“Indeed, Mr Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse, and trauma as a result of the deaths of his passengers and crew.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day voyage, sinking less than 30 metres from the shore.
Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped below deck.
Ms Wilson bought her most recent ticket at Family Food Mart in the US town of Mansfield and the shop will receive a $10,000 (£7,900) bonus for its sale of the ticket, according to the Massachusetts State Lottery.
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She bought her first $1m winning ticket at Dubs’s Discount Liquors in the same town.