The Latest | Israeli delegation arrives in Cairo for Gaza cease-fire talks

An Israeli delegation has arrived in Egypt to press ahead with cease-fire talks, as Israel and Hamas consider the latest proposal. That’s according to three Egyptian airport officials who did not provide further details. International mediators are pushing Israel and Hamas toward a phased deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza.

Talks between the sides were rattled over the weekend when Israel said it targeted Hamas’ military commander in a massive strike. His status remains unclear.

Hamas' Oct. 7 attack sparked the war when militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,600 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Two international courts have accused Israel of war crimes and genocide – charges Israel denies. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crammed into squalid tent camps in central and southern Gaza. Israeli restrictions, fighting and the breakdown of law and order have limited humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine.

Here’s the latest:

UN says comments by a spokesman in Netanyahu’s office about UN official are ‘reprehensible’

UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations says comments by a spokesman in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office about the head of the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees are “reprehensible” and threatening.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric was responding Wednesday to comments made by spokesman David Mencer who called Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the a gency known as UNRWA, “one of the bad guys, a terrorist sympathizer, a Jew-killing enabler, a liar.”

Mencer issued the denunciations of Lazzarini Tuesday after saying that Israeli forces have retrieved “millions of documents and captured enemy material” exposing the involvement of UNRWA employees in Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7 in southern Israel.

He said the documents also showed “the deep and systemic infiltration by those terror organizations, Hamas, but also Palestinian Islamic Jihad into the ranks of UNRWA.”

The U.N.’s internal watchdog is currently investigating allegations against 14 of the 19 UNRWA staffers who Israel claims were involved in the Oct. 7 attacks. It closed one case because Israel provided no evidence and suspended four others because of a lack of sufficient evidence.

The U.N.’s Dujarric said “there have not been a million documents handed over to the secretary-general,” Antonio Guterres, and a letter sent to him with about a hundred names was immediately sent to the Office of Internal Oversight Services, the watchdog known as OIOS.

UNRWA has 32,000 staff in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, including 13,000 in Gaza who provide education, health care, food and other services to several million Palestinians and their families. UNRWA facilities in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter, have been repeatedly attacked.

Mencer’s “inflammatory language” to describe Lazzarini “in an environment that’s already extremely volatile is reprehensible and downright dangerous because it puts at risk senior U.N. officials whose only focus is on helping civilians in Gaza and to alleviate their suffering,” Dujarric said.

The U.N. spokesman stressed that it was UNRWA that first announced the list of staff potentially involved in the Oct. 7 attacks, which Lazzarini has repeatedly denounced.

At the UN, Russia's top diplomat says Hezbollah, Iran and Lebanon don't want a war with Israel

UNITED NATIONS – Russia’s top diplomat says the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, its main backer Iran, and Lebanon’s government do not want “a full-blown war – and there’s a suspicion that some circles in Israel are trying to achieve just that.”

Sergey Lavrov told a U.N. news conference Wednesday that Russia is doing “everything possible to calm tensions.” He expressed hope that Western nations make every effort to ensure Israel won’t act on what he says U.S. and European analysts are calling Israel’s “provocative mindsets.”

Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire almost every day since the Israel-Hamas war began in Gaza last October. The U.S. and the international community have been lobbying for calm, and are hopeful a diplomatic solution will prevent the fighting from spiraling into a wider Middle East war.

Should war break out, Israel would face a much more formidable foe in Lebanon than in Gaza. Hezbollah is the Arab world’s most significant paramilitary force with a robust internal structure as well as a sizeable arsenal. Israel sees the group as its most direct threat.

Lavrov said Iran’s previous government and new president “reflect a very responsible position that Iran is not interested in escalation.”

Without offering names, Lavrov said U.S. and European analysts say “escalation, as the practical developments show, is something which Israel is interested in.”

“Hezbollah has been very much restrained in its actions,” Lavrov asserted, and its leader Hassan Nasrallah “delivered a number of public statements which reaffirmed that position.”

“However, the sentiment is that there’s an attempt to provoke them, and to provoke them into a full-blown engagement,” he said.

Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have killed over 450 people, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also more than 80 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, 21 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed since the war in Gaza began.

US military pier for carrying aid to Gaza will be dismantled after weather and security problems

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military-built pier to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza will be dismantled and brought home, ending a mission that has been fraught with repeated weather and security problems that limited how much food and other supplies could get to starving Palestinians.

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander at U.S. Central Command, told reporters in a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday that the pier achieved its intended effect in what he called an “unprecedented operation.”

As the U.S. military steps away from the sea route for humanitarian aid, questions swirl about Israel’s new plan to use the port at Ashdod as a substitute.

There are few details on how it will work and lingering concerns about whether aid groups will have enough viable land crossings to get assistance into the territory besieged by war between Israel and Hamas. Israel controls all of Gaza's land border crossings.

Planned as a temporary fix to get aid to starving Palestinians, the pier project was criticized from the start by aid groups that condemned it as a waste of time and money. While U.S. defense officials acknowledged that the weather was worse than expected and limited the days the pier could operate, they also expressed frustration with humanitarian groups for being unable and unwilling to distribute the aid that got through the system, only to have it pile up onshore.

A critical element that neither the aid groups nor the U.S. military could control, however, was the Israeli defense forces whose military operation into Gaza put humanitarian workers in persistent danger and in a number of cases cost them their lives.

As a result, the pier operated for fewer than 25 days after its installation May 16, and aid agencies used it only about half that time due to security concerns.

US imposes a travel ban on a former Israeli solder convicted of 2016 ‘extrajudicial killing’ of a wounded Palestinian

WASHINGTON — A former Israeli soldier convicted of fatally shooting a wounded Palestinian man in the head in 2016 has been banned from entering the United States.

The visa restrictions on Elor Azaria and his immediate family are intended “to promote accountability for gross violations of human rights” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Wednesday, calling the shooting an “extrajudicial killing.”

The travel ban is the latest step by the U.S. — Israel’s top ally — against Israelis, West Bank Jewish settlers or groups it deems have undermined peace and stability in the West Bank by encouraging or participating in violence against Palestinian civilians.

Azaria, an army medic, served two-thirds of his 14-month sentence for manslaughter. He was caught on video by a human rights worker fatally shooting Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, who was lying wounded on the ground, unarmed and virtually motionless, after stabbing a soldier in the West Bank.

Azaria’s sanctioning is unusual because of his high-profile trial by an Israeli military court. He has mostly remained out of the public eye since his release in 2018.

Critics say Israel rarely punishes soldiers for alleged crimes against Palestinians, pointing to the low rate of indictments. Israel says it holds soldiers to account on merit through independent and professional investigations.

In a country where military service is mandatory, Azaria's case sharply divided Israelis. The military pushed for his prosecution, saying he violated its code of ethics. Many Israelis, particularly on the nationalist right, defended his actions.

Israeli delegation arrives in Cairo to continue cease-fire talks

CAIRO__ An Israeli delegation arrived in Egypt on Wednesday to continue cease-fire talks as Israel and Hamas consider the latest proposal, three Egyptian airport officials said.

International mediators continue to push Israel and Hamas toward a phased deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza.

The Israeli delegation includes six officials, the airport officials said without disclosing identities. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the arrival with the media.

Talks between the sides were rattled over the weekend when Israel said it targeted Hamas’ military commander in a massive strike. His status remains unclear. Hamas has said the talks continue.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has told U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin that such heavy pressure on Hamas had “led to the conditions necessary to achieve an agreement for the return of the hostages.” He gave no further details in a statement from his office.

— Jack Jeffery in Jerusalem

Israel releases 13 Palestinians after detaining them for weeks

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli authorities released 13 Palestinians who had been detained for weeks, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Wednesday.

The Palestinian paramedic group said they were taken from an Israeli checkpoint in the Gaza Strip to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah. Some wept when they were reunited with their relatives. Others showed signs of bruising to journalists.

One of those released, Zakaria Abu al-Eish, said he was caring for his ill father in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza when Israeli forces stormed their home and detained him.

“For 55 days, I was handcuffed, blindfolded, deprived from sleeping, no rest, even food they brought us was for animals,” al-Eish told The Associated Press. “If you eat or not, no one cares. They dealt with us as non-humans.”

Israel has detained some 4,000 Palestinians since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war, according to official figures. About 1,500 were released after the military determined they were not affiliated with Hamas.