Hostages shot by Israel had white flag, early inquiry finds

Thanks for reading Need to Know this Sunday, December 17. Here are today’s top stories.

• UK, US shoot down Houthi drones in Red Sea: The tensions spilling over from the war in the Gaza Strip to merchant shipping in the Red Sea escalated on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) when Britain and the United States said their militaries had shot down more than a dozen attack drones.

• Hostages shot by Israel had white flag, early inquiry finds: The three Israeli hostages who were killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip on Friday had emerged shirtless from a building and were bearing a makeshift white flag when they were shot, the military said on Saturday (Sunday AEDT), asserting that the soldiers who fired had violated the military’s rules of engagement.

• Netanyahu hints new negotiations under way to recover Gaza hostages: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) to hint that new negotiations were under way to recover hostages held by Hamas, after his chief of Mossad intelligence met the prime minister of Qatar, a country mediating in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• Farrell confident wine, lobster trade bans will be lifted: Trade Minister Don Farrell has told Sky News he is confident that tariffs on Australian wine will be lifted by China.

Leaders from Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were meeting at a special summit on Sunday and expected to adopt a joint vision that emphasises security cooperation amid growing tensions with China in regional seas.

Ties between Japan and ASEAN used to be largely based on Japanese assistance to the developing economies, in part due to lingering bitterness over Japan’s wartime actions. But in recent years, the ties have focused more on security amid China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, while Japan’s postwar pacifist stance and trust-building efforts have fostered friendlier relations.

“Based on our strong relationship of trust, it is our hope that Japan and ASEAN will bring together their strengths and find solutions in an era of compound crises that are difficult for any one country to solve,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in a speech on Saturday night at the State Guest House in Tokyo.

“As we co-create and build upon stronger and more vibrant economies and societies, we will be better able to secure a free and open international order based on the rule of law,” he added.

Kishida proposed bolstering ties between Japan and ASEAN in security as well as in business, investment, climate, technology and people exchanges. Kishida and this year’s ASEAN chairman, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, are set to announce a joint vision on Sunday after several sessions.

On Saturday, on the sidelines of the December 16-18 summit, Kishida held a series of bilateral talks as Japan seeks to step up bilateral security ties with ASEAN countries.

Austria has given its approval to a 12th package of EU sanctions on Russia after Ukraine removed Raiffeisen Bank International from a blacklist, Ukraine’s government website and an EU diplomat said on Saturday (Sunday AEDT).

Austria had been pushing to remove the bank from a Ukrainian list dubbed “international sponsors of war” - which sets out to shame companies doing business in Russia and supporting the war effort by, for instance, paying taxes.

“Austria’s sanctions reservation is lifted,” an EU diplomat said.

The blacklist has no legal standing, but it is symbolically important, reinforcing public pressure on Raiffeisen to quit Russia, something the Austrian bank has said it is willing to do but which has yet to happen.

“The status is suspended for the period of bilateral consultations involving representatives of the European Commission,” the Ukrainian government website said on Raiffeisen’s status on Saturday.

Austria had wanted Raiffeisen removed from the blacklist in return for signing off on the latest EU sanctions package against Russia.

Raiffeisen had intended to spin off its Russian business, which provides a payment lifeline to hundreds of companies there, after coming under pressure from international regulators.

The mistaken killings of three Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military on Friday (Saturday AEDT) was a nightmare come true for former hostages and for the families of people still being held by Hamas.

Raz Ben-Ami, a former Israeli hostage released by Hamas during a recent truce between the two sides, told demonstrators in Tel Aviv, Israel, that she had warned government officials during a meeting with Israel’s cabinet that the offensive could put the hostages in the crossfire.

“I begged the cabinet, and we all warned that the fighting would likely harm the hostages. Unfortunately, I was right,” said Ben-Ami, whose husband Ohad is still being held captive in Gaza.

“I survived,” she added. “If the agreement to release the hostages had been delayed by a week, I might not be here.”

Hamas-led fighters abducted more than 240 Israelis and foreign nationals – including women, young children and older people – during their October 7 surprise attack, in which Palestinian assailants overran border communities near Gaza. Roughly 1200 people in Israel were killed in the assault, according to Israeli officials.

More than 80 Israelis, all women and children, and 24 foreign nationals were freed from Gaza as part of a temporary ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in late November. Roughly 240 Palestinian prisoners – all women and children – were released in exchange. That agreement collapsed in early December and both sides returned to fighting.

On Friday (Saturday AEDT), the Israeli military announced that its soldiers had killed the three hostages – identified as Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer Talalka – in Shejaiye in northern Gaza. Their deaths stunned the country and provided a stark reminder of the risks the remaining hostages face, as Israel carries out massive airstrikes and a full-scale ground offensive against Hamas.

For Alaa Talalka, whose cousin Samer was killed in Shajaiye, his relative’s months-long captivity and sudden killing were like “a bad dream that I keep trying to wake up from”, he said. Palestinian militants abducted Samer from the farm where he worked on the Gaza border soon after they began their October 7 assault; after 7.20 am, his family lost all contact with him, his cousin said.

On Friday (Saturday AEDT), the family was celebrating Samer’s mother’s birthday, a small point of light amid the crisis prompted by his abduction. Then came the news he had been shot dead by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

“He was so sociable and friendly. He loved to laugh and make people happy,” said Alaa Talalka, a 37-year-old psychologist from the Arab town of Hura in the southern Negev desert. “I can’t fathom what’s happened.”

Israeli leaders have said their operation has two goals: to topple Hamas and to free the more than 120 hostages who remain captive in Gaza. Top officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have insisted that the twin objectives go hand in hand.

The families of hostages, however, have called for a new deal to release the captives as soon as possible.

“The hostages are experiencing hell and they are in mortal peril,” Ben-Ami said. “Israel must offer another hostage release deal and get the international community to back it.”

Itzik Horn, whose children Eitan, 37, and Yair, 45, were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, said the Israeli military’s killing of the hostages reinforced his belief that Israel must immediately reach a deal to free all the captives, even if it meant releasing Palestinians being held in Israeli jails on terrorism charges.

“Let them free all the Palestinian prisoners we have here, all the terrorists – what do I care?” Horn said in an interview. “The most important thing isn’t to defeat Hamas. The only victory here is to bring back all the hostages.”

One of the young men was slated to perform at a Tel Aviv, Israel, music festival on October 7. Another was about to begin college and study computer engineering. The third was planning to marry soon and had started building a house next to his father’s.

The Israeli military identified the three hostages it mistakenly killed in the Gaza Strip on Friday (Saturday AEDT) as Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz, taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza during the Hamas-led assault on October 7; and Samer Talalka, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Am.

Here is what we know about the three men.

Haim, 28, was a drummer in a heavy metal band called Persephore. His band’s latest single was released in June, and it was planning to perform at a metal music festival in Tel Aviv on October 7, said Liat Bell Sommer, a spokesperson for the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum.

A day before he was killed, his band had posted on social media that it was planning a concert in his honour.

Shamriz, 26, lived in a neighbourhood called the Young Generation compound in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, according to the forum. He played on the Sha’ar Hanegev basketball team, based in the Negev desert in southern Israel, near Gaza.

On October 7, when Hamas forces stormed the area around his apartment, his last message was a heart emoji sent to his brother, Jonathan.

Shamriz planned to study computer engineering at Sapir College, in the north-western Negev region, Sommer said.

Talalka, 24, was working at a chicken hatchery near Kibbutz Nir Am on October 7 when he was abducted. He had spoken with his sister on the phone, telling her he was injured by terrorist gunfire before the call was disconnected, Sommer said.

He was “an avid motorcyclist who loved to ride around the countryside”, she said.

Talalka was from Hura, a town in southern Israel of Bedouin Arabs, an Israeli minority. He was one of several Bedouin hostages; at least 17 of the roughly 1200 people who were killed in the attack on October 7 were Bedouins.

In an interview with Ynet, an Israeli news site, Talalka’s father described him as a “good, honest young man who stays out of trouble”. He had worked at the chicken hatchery with his father for the past six years.

His father said his son planned to be married in the summer and had started building a house next to his.

“Sometimes in the afternoon, I wander around here, sitting alone in one of the incomplete rooms of Samer’s house,” his father said. “I’m often in tears, smoking a cigarette and sipping coffee – just waiting for him, hoping he’ll come home. A family member suggested we should keep building, but I just can’t. How can we go on building Samer’s home when he isn’t here?”

Republican poll leader Donald Trump approvingly quoted autocrats Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary, part of a continuing effort to deflect from his criminal prosecutions and spin alarm about eroding democracy against President Joe Biden.

His speech at a presidential campaign rally on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) also reprised dehumanising language targeting immigrants that historians have likened to past authoritarians, including a reference that some civil rights advocates and experts in extremism have compared to Adolf Hitler’s fixation on blood purity.

And he used the term “hostages” to describe people charged with violent crimes in the January 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump quoted Putin, the dictatorial Russia president who invaded neighbouring Ukraine, criticising the criminal charges against Trump, who is accused in four separate cases of falsifying business records in a hush money scheme, mishandling classified documents, and trying to overturn the 2020 election results. In the quotation, Putin agreed with Trump’s own attempts to portray the prosecutions as politically motivated.

“It shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,” Trump quoted Putin saying in the speech. Trump added: “They’re all laughing at us.”

He went on to align himself with Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has amassed functionally autocratic power through controlling the media and changing the country’s constitution. Orban has presented his leadership as a model of an “illiberal” state and has opposed immigration for leading to “mixed race” Europeans. Democratic world leaders have sought to isolate Orban for eroding civil liberties and bolstering ties with Putin.

But Trump called him “highly respected” and welcomed his praise as “the man who can save the Western world”.

In the speech, Trump also repeated his inflammatory language against undocumented immigrants, by accusing them of “poisoning the blood of our country” – a phrase that immigrant groups and civil rights advocates have condemned as reminiscent of Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, in which he told Germans to “care for the purity of their own blood” by eliminating Jews.

The crowd of thousands in a college arena cheered Trump’s recitation of an anti-immigrant poem called The Snake that he has repeated on the campaign trail and popularised since the 2016 campaign.

Approaching the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump came to the defence of alleged violent offenders who have been detained awaiting trial on the order of judges.

“I don’t call them prisoners, I call them hostages,” he said. “They’re hostages.”

Israeli soldiers raided a hospital in northern Gaza over several days this week, leaving a trail of rubble and upturned earth in the hospital grounds and outside the shattered entrance, video images show, amid conflicting accounts of the events.

The Gazan health ministry said Israeli troops made hundreds of internally displaced persons taking refuge inside the Kamal Adwan hospital leave, and evacuated wounded patients and medical staff to the hospital grounds.

Citing the ministry’s reports, World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier this week said he was “extremely worried” about the situation at the hospital.

The Israeli military said the hospital was being used as a Hamas “command and control centre” and that soldiers had detained about 80 militant fighters before leaving the site on Saturday. Earlier in the week, Gazan authorities said about 70 medical staff were detained by Israel in the raid.

Video obtained by Reuters showed two bodies in shrouds, an injured boy along with a wrecked car, smashed and burnt walls and piles of abandoned belongings at the hospital. Reuters could not determine the cause of the fatalities or the injuries.

“They raided the building, and they took all the employees for investigation, also the injured people were being investigated,” said Ahmed Al Kahlot, a doctor at the hospital, dressed in green scrubs.

The military released video on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) that it said showed soldiers shooting at the hospital, finding weapons hidden in medical apparatus, and displaying several guns and grenades.

Reuters could not independently verify the accounts of the events.

Reuters was also unable to verify reports, including from Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila, citing witnesses who claimed civilians were buried under earth moved by Israeli army bulldozers near the hospital.

Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the allegations.

Because of the war in the fenced-off coastal territory, only 11 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functional, the UN humanitarian affairs agency said this week.

An Israeli airstrike killed a US Agency for International Development contractor in Gaza last month, his colleagues said in a statement on Saturday. The US development agency noted the death and urged greater protection for humanitarian workers in the fighting there.

Hani Jnena, 33, was killed on November 5 along with his wife, their daughters, two and four, and her family, the US-based humanitarian group Global Communities said.

An internet-technology worker, Jnena had fled his neighbourhood in Gaza City with his family to escape the airstrikes, only to be killed while sheltering with his in-laws, the group said. His employer was an on-the-ground partner for USAID, the US agency said.

In a final message to a colleague, Hani had written, “my daughters are terrified, and I am trying to keep them calm, but this bombing is terrifying”, Global Communities said.

It was a rare report of the killing of someone with US government ties in the more than two-month war between Israel and Hamas. Numerous workers with local and international aid agencies, including more than 100 UN workers, have been killed in Gaza as Israel bombards areas crowded with civilians and battles with Hamas fighters on the ground.

Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 17,000 people have been killed, two-thirds of them women and children. Israel’s offensive is in response to an October 7 Hamas assault in Israel that killed about 1200 people.

USAID employees had been prominent in recent open letters by US government employees objecting to US policy supporting Israel’s continued offensive, including President Joe Biden’s decision not to join many other governments in calling for a ceasefire.

In an email, USAID spokesperson Jessica Jennings said on Saturday (Sunday AEDT): “The USAID community grieves the deaths of the innocent civilians and many humanitarian workers who have been killed in this conflict, including courageous individuals like Hani Jnena.

“In providing assistance and advocating for greater safety for civilian populations and the humanitarians who serve them, we are doing our utmost to honour the dedication, fortitude and compassion of all humanitarian workers who have been killed.”

White House officials fear Mahmoud Abbas will be unable to lead Gaza after the war, even as Joe Biden continues to back a “revitalised” Palestinian Authority (PA) taking control.

The issue has dominated around-the-clock discussions in the White House, where senior officials have spent weeks frantically drafting proposals for how to run Gaza, sources familiar with the talks told The Sunday Telegraph.

America’s private push for Israel to conclude its offensive early in the new year has illuminated not only Joe Biden’s desire to end the war, but also his ideas for what comes next.

It has also exposed a rift between Washington and Israel, with the two allies at odds over how they believe the enclave should be run after hostilities with Hamas cease.

Senior officials have been forgoing sleep as they work to game out plans that might be palatable to all parties involved.

For any to succeed, they stress, it must have the backing of Palestinians, Israel and their Arab neighbours – a high bar to clear given the PA’s rampant corruption and the growing popularity of Hamas in the West Bank.

Concerns abound over Abbas, 88, the president of PA, who is now 18 years into an elected four-year term.

White House officials do not explicitly say Abbas cannot remain in his position. But national security sources have signalled that behind the scenes the US is confronting the “biological reality” of the situation.

One former official said it was likely the administration would be “building up our relationship, and our interactions” with potential replacements.

Dr Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said: “If your goal was stability and security, it’s always a bad idea to bet on an 88-year-old chain smoker.”

One alternative name circulating is Mohammed Dahlan, the former leader of Fatah in Gaza, who has been living in exile in the United Arab Emirates for the past decade.

Dahlan is powerful, well-connected and particularly influential in the UAE – a key regional powerbroker – where he serves as a close adviser to Abu Dhabi’s powerful ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed.

He is said to have played a major role behind the scenes in the Abraham Accords, the 2020 normalisation treaty between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain.

This makes him more palatable to Israel, as does his role in the Oslo peace agreement.

But the extent of his popularity among Gazans is less clear.

He has been accused of presiding over the torture of Hamas captives in the 1990s but denies this.

In a rare interview with the Economist in late October, Dahlan dismissed rumours that he was being lined up as the next leader.

Salam Fayyad, a former PA prime minister, is reportedly favoured by some Egyptian and American officials to lead a new government in Gaza.

Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley has said that the government was wrong to vote in favour of a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza because it departed from the position of the UK and US, and failed to condemn Hamas.

“We all want to the number of innocent lives lost reduced, and more humanitarian aid reaching Gaza,” Ley said.

The deputy Liberal leader said peace would not be achieved in the Middle East unless Hamas was “dismantled”.

“Australia needs to appreciate that unless you dismantled Hamas it will continue to use innocent people as human shields,” Ley said.