Israeli airstrike kills dozens in Rafah area for displaced people, Gaza health officials say
Palestinian health and civil emergency service officials said at least 35 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike Sunday on the southern Gaza city of Rafah that hit tents for displaced people — an incident that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) says is under review.
The IDF said its air force struck a Hamas compound in Rafah and that the strike was carried out with “precise ammunition and on the basis of precise intelligence.” The strike took out the Hamas chief of staff for the West Bank and another senior Hamas official behind deadly attacks on Israelis, the military said in a statement.
“The IDF is aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review,” the statement read.
The spokesperson for the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qidra, said 35 people were killed and dozens others, most of them women and children, were wounded in the attack.
The strike took place in Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in western Rafah, where thousands of people were taking shelter after many fled the eastern areas of the city where Israeli forces began a ground offensive over two weeks ago.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said its field hospital in Rafah was receiving an influx of casualties, and that other hospitals also were taking in a large number of patients.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri described the attack in Rafah as a “massacre,” holding the United States responsible for aiding Israel with weapons and money.
“The air strikes burned the tents, the tents are melting and the people’s bodies are also melting,” said one of the residents who arrived at the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah.
Hamas launches rockets at Tel Aviv
Earlier on Sunday, Hamas’s armed wing said it launched a “big missile” attack on Tel Aviv as the Israeli military sounded sirens in the central city. Rocket sirens had not been heard in Tel Aviv for the past four months.
The Israeli military said eight projectiles were identified crossing from the area of Rafah, the southern tip of the Gaza Strip where Israel kept up operations despite a ruling by the top UN court on Friday ordering it to stop attacking the city.
A number of the projectiles were intercepted, it said. Israeli emergency medical services said they had received no reports of casualties.
The attack signalled that the militant group was still able to fire long-range rockets despite more than seven months of a devastating Israeli military offensive from the air and the ground. Rafah is located about 100 kilometres south of Tel Aviv.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was convening his war cabinet later on Sunday to discuss continued operations in Rafah. Israel argues that the UN court’s ruling allows room for some military action there.
In a statement on its Telegram channel, the Hamas al-Qassam Brigades said the rockets were launched in response to “Zionist massacres against civilians.”
Israel says it wants to root out Hamas fighters holed up in Rafah and rescue hostages it says are being held in the area, but its assault has worsened the plight of civilians and caused an international outcry.
On Sunday, Israeli strikes killed at least five Palestinians in Rafah, according to local medical services. The Gaza health ministry identified the dead as civilians.
May 24, 2024 – Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations explains the government’s response to the court ruling. And Liberals are looking for new ways to win back young voters, but will it work?
Israeli tanks have probed around the edges of Rafah, near the crossing point from Gaza into Egypt, and have entered some of its eastern districts, residents say, but have not yet entered the city in force since the start of operations in the city earlier this month.
Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz said the rockets fired from Rafah “prove that the [Israel Defense Forces] must operate in every place Hamas still operates from.”
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant held an operational assessment in Rafah where he was briefed on “troops’ operations above and below the ground, as well as the deepening of operations in additional areas with the aim of dismantling Hamas battalions,” his office said in a statement.
Itamar Ben Gvir, a hardline public security minister who is not part of Israel’s war cabinet, urged the army to hit Rafah harder. “Rafah with full force,” he posted on X.
Nearly 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s health ministry says.
Israel launched the operation after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Published at Sun, 26 May 2024 13:32:05 +0000
What’s behind a historic, unusual U.S. military cash transfer to Canadian mines
The United States was growing desperate, months before its entry into the Second World War. It was gravely short of aluminum, and scrambling for suppliers.
Its solution: turn north to Canada.
American public money flooded into Quebec, building the aluminum industry that supplied raw materials for Allied planes and tanks.
“I would be willing to buy aluminum from anybody,” said Harry Truman, then still a U.S. senator, in 1941 hearings on the topic.
“I don’t care whether it is the Aluminum Company of America or Reynolds or Al Capone.”
Now, in an era of global tension, the Americans are looking north again.
The U.S. military has, for the first time in generations, spent public money on minerals projects inside Canada: nearly $15 million US to mine and process copper, gold, graphite and cobalt in Quebec and the Northwest Territories.
It might not be the last: Officials expect additional cross-border announcements under the more than half-billion-dollar U.S. program.
These minerals are vital ingredients in an endless array of civilian and military products — including medicine, batteries, electronics, engines, cars, planes, drones and munitions.
The context, this time, is China.
What’s driving it: U.S. fear of China
The U.S. has expressed escalating unease over its dependence on its biggest rival. China controls the global mineral supply, has cut off minerals exports in the past, and fears a potential standoff with the U.S. over Taiwan.
Washington said two years ago that it was weighing funding Canadian mining startups under the U.S. Defense Production Act (DPA). It promised funding last year, and this month, it formally revealed the first such initiatives.
The novel nature of the announcement was scarcely conveyed in the dry language of the press release, which referred to a Canada-U.S. co-investment.
What’s uncommon here isn’t Canada’s government funding Canadian mining companies. It’s the American military funding them, for what’s believed to be the first time in the 74-year history of the U.S. DPA, which created new powers for the president to fund or buy certain products as a national-security matter.
“It’s a historic move by the U.S. government,” said Ben Steinberg, who worked on energy-security issues for the U.S. government, and who now works for a coalition of battery-makers.
“The U.S. military needs these materials for combat and for national-security purposes.… It’s an important move.”
The U.S. started examining dozens of Canadian proposals in 2022. It requested product pitches, then more detailed applications, then it finally picked two winners, at which point the Canadian government contributed millions of its own.
What’s the catch?
The cash comes with no strings attached — for now. This is free money, in the form of grants, to help companies get through final feasibility studies and permitting.
But in a national-security crisis, the U.S. military could demand these supplies — say in the event of a severe trade war, or worse, a shooting war in the Asia-Pacific.
That’s made clear in a clause in Canada’s own version of the Defence Production Act, which gives the government the power to buy raw materials on behalf of a NATO ally.
In other words, the U.S. military could leap to the front of the customer line.
One recipient company said that, under its grant contract, the U.S. government would pay the going market rate if it became a customer.
That company, Ontario-based Fortune Minerals, says it’s already spent $137 million in preparatory work on a cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper mine in the Northwest Territories and a processing facility in southern Canada.
But lending markets froze two years ago, as Chinese-controlled mines ramped up production, causing global prices of critical minerals to plunge.
With prices low, feasibility studies incomplete and uncertain returns on investment, lenders shut their wallets to the sector.
“We’ve been living kind of hand-to-mouth for a fairly lengthy period of time,” said Robin Goad, president of Fortune Minerals.
“The money was not available from banks,” he said. “Because the capital markets, for junior mining, have been closed … for several years.”
A look at the two companies involved
He started asking U.S. federal departments for money several years ago, and learned most of them couldn’t fund a foreign project; but the military could, because of an old defence-industrial agreement, which the U.K. and Australia have just joined.
He underwent a preliminary screening, then an exhaustive request-for-proposals submission, and finally learned a few months ago that his project was tentatively approved. This month’s announcement made it official.
The funding will pay for the final feasibility studies, and Goad hopes to start construction on the mine within two years and start production in 2027, given that he already has key permits and an environmental assessment.
“We are a very advanced project,” Goad said.
He suspects what won the grant was his company’s plans to process, not just mine, at home, retaining control of these minerals entirely within North America. In addition, he’s working to potentially process materials for U.K. mining giant Rio Tinto.
“We have to go faster. It cannot take us 12 to 15 years to permit new mines in this country if we want to successfully advance the energy transition,” said Natural Resource Minister Jonathan Wilkinson as the federal government released its critical minerals strategy Friday.
The other winning bid belonged to a Quebec-based company, Lomiko Metals, seeking to develop what it describes as one of the world’s largest graphite deposits.
“We were very excited [by this news], as you can imagine,” said Gordana Slepcev, Lomiko’s chief operating officer.
“This is a very, very important step for us.”
She said the public funding will cover half of everything the company needs before a decision on construction, meaning its late-stage feasibility and permitting work.
With the Pentagon backing, she’s not worried about being able to raise the other half over the next few years; she estimates the final plans will take between three and five years; shovels could be in the ground between 2027 and 2029.
“The reality is we can always speed up the timeline,” she said. “If capital comes right away, we can go [faster].”
A mood shift during the 1940s
In the 1940s, that capital came quickly.
The U.S. pumped tens of millions in that era’s currency into making an aluminum plant in Quebec’s Saguenay region the largest in the world, for decades to come.
The project was considered so vital to national security its location was kept secret for two years, with The New York Times eventually breaking news of the “hush-hush” plan.
In the meantime, Canada boasted of supplying the aluminum for thousands of Allied planes, in volumes large enough to equip a new army division every six weeks.
A few years later, with the Allies on the cusp of victory, the American mood turned.
Politicians and U.S. industry complained about these arrangements, even holding congressional investigations to address a question that had seemed self-evident amid the frenzy of a few years earlier: Why had U.S. money built an industry in another country?
This modern-day iteration has been launched with no clarity over whether the world is entering a phase anywhere near as dangerous.
Published at Sun, 26 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000
