Key events
The German government has banned a Hamburg-based organization accused of promoting the Iranian leadership’s ideology and supporting Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, as police raided 53 properties around the country.
The ban on the Islamic Center Hamburg, or IZH, and five suborganizations around Germany followed searches in November, AP reported. Interior minister Nancy Faeser said evidence gathered in the investigation “confirmed the serious suspicions to such a degree that we ordered the ban today.”
The IZH “promotes an Islamist-extremist, totalitarian ideology in Germany,” while it and its suborganizations “also support the terrorists of Hezbollah and spread aggressive antisemitism,” Faeser said in a statement.
Her ministry said that “as the direct representative of Iran’s ‘Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution,” the IZH disseminates “the ideology of the Islamic Revolution in an aggressive and militant way and seeks to bring about such a revolution in the Federal Republic of Germany.”
The group, which runs a mosque in Hamburg, has long been under observation by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, which said in its annual report for 2023 that it is Iran’s most important representative in Germany beside the country’s embassy.
It said there were no reliable figures for members or supporters of the group, founded in 1962. There have been calls for it to be banned for years.
Musk activates internet service in Gaza hospital with help of UAE and Israel
SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk said that his Starlink satellite internet service has been activated in a hospital in Gaza, where many medical facilities have been destroyed by the war, with the help of the United Arab Emirates and Israel.
The Gulf Arab state’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, thanked the billionaire entrepreneur for supporting the UAE field hospital in Gaza, where many medical facilities have been demolished and medicines are scarce, Reuters reported.
“Starlink is now active in a Gaza hospital with the support of @UAEmediaoffice and @Israel,” Musk posted on X.
The announcement came more than five months after the Israeli government gave approval for Starlink’s use in the hospital in Rafah, a flashpoint city in southern Gaza.
Residents said on Tuesday that Israeli forces had blown up several homes in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, where Israel said its operation aimed to dismantle the last Hamas battalions.
The high speed internet would enable potentially life-saving medical consultations via real-time video calling, the UAE foreign ministry said in February.
The UAE, a major oil producer and regional finance and tourism hub, signed a normalisation deal with Israel in 2020 along with Bahrain and Morocco. Sudan later sealed a normalisation agreement with Israel.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Middle East crisis live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the breaking news from the region throughout the day.
We begin with reports of protests in Washington DC over the arrival of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, including a sit-in at a congressional office building that ended with multiple arrests, according to the Associated Press.
Some of the demonstrations have condemned Israel but others have expressed support while pressuring Netanyahu to strike a ceasefire deal and bring home the hostages still being held by Hamas.
Netanyahu’s visit includes meetings with president Joe Biden and a Wednesday speech before a joint session of Congress. The Israeli prime minister has also signalled that a ceasefire deal that would free dozens of hostages in Gaza could be taking shape.
The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders was among those criticising Netanyahu’s visit, calling him a “war criminal” presiding over a “rightwing extremist government” in comments in the Senate.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip says over 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in the nine-month war.
First though, a summary of the latest developments:
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Doctors in the largest hospital in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis pleaded for supplies from a facility overwhelmed by wounded people, as Israeli airstrikes, artillery fire and fighting on the streets continued for a second day. “There’s no space for more patients. There’s no space in the operating theatres. There is a lack of medical supplies, so we cannot save our patients,” Mohammed Zaqout, the director of Nasser hospital, told AFP. The UN’s office for humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said the hospital was facing “a new mass casualty influx, amid a dire lack of blood units, medical supplies and hospital beds”.
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The Palestinian Authority’s budget deficit is projected to surge by 172% in 2024 compared to 2023, according to a statement from the cabinet on Tuesday, Reuters reports. Revenues are also expected to drop by 21% due to the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The announcement followed President Mahmoud Abbas’ approval of the emergency budget for 2024, which includes austerity measures such as reducing salaries, operational and capital expenditures, and maintaining minimal development expenditures.
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Netanyahu has landed in Washington DC. Netanyahu’s first 24 hours have seen a series of small meetings with the families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October, in which he said that progress was being made on negotiating a prisoner exchange of the remaining 120 hostages as part of a ceasefire deal but defended delaying for better terms.
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will host the Israeli prime minister on Friday at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump said on Tuesday. “Looking forward to welcoming Bibi Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida,” the former US president said in a post on Truth Social, using Netanyahu’s nickname. The meeting will be their first since the end of Trump’s presidency, during which the two forged close ties, and comes at a time of strains also between Netanyahu and Biden over Israel’s war against Hamas militants in Gaza.
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Leaders from Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian factions have agreed after three days of talks in Beijing to form a national unity government at an unspecified point in the future, in a move that has bolstered China’s status as a global mediator, particularly in the Middle East.
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Vandals ransacked an Israeli-Palestinian restaurant in Berlin, smashing wine glasses and defiling the space with “disgusting acts” a week after it hosted a queer Jewish-Muslim brunch, its owners have said.