JERUSALEM: “I believed in peace with Gaza, but I was mistaken,” said Avida Bachar, a resident of kibbutz Beeri near the Gaza Strip, speaking from his hospital bed.
Bachar lost his wife and son in the bloody October 7 attack by Hamas, the single deadliest event in Israel since the country’s creation in 1948.
“We must destroy the enemy because if we don’t we have no possible future,” Bachar, who is in his fifties, told AFP.

ISTANBUL: Turkiye teetered on the edge of political crisis Wednesday as one top court filed a criminal complaint against members of another over its order to release a jailed opposition politician.
The Supreme Court of Appeals said it was filing criminal charges against members of the Constitutional Court who ruled that Can Atalay be released.
The 47-year-old lawyer was one of seven defendants sentenced last year to 18 years in prison as part of a highly controversial trial that also saw the award-winning philanthropist Osman Kavala jailed for life.

JERUSALEM: Quiet sobs during memorial speeches, mourning crowds lighting candles… Israel fell silent briefly on Tuesday, marking one month since the deadly Hamas attacks of October 7 plunged it into war.
At Jerusalem’s Hebrew University around 1,000 people observed a minute of silence and recited prayers for the 1,400 killed, mostly civilians, in the worst attack on Israel since its founding in 1948.
“The atrocities left a horrible mark,” said university president Asher Cohen. “But there is hope. There will be rebirth.”

GAZA/JERUSALEM: Israel’s ground forces in the Gaza Strip aimed on Wednesday to locate and disable Hamas militants’ vast tunnel network beneath the enclave, the next phase in an Israeli offensive that has killed thousands of Palestinians.
Since Hamas gunmen killed 1,400 people and took some 240 hostages in an Oct. 7 cross-border gun rampage, Israel has pounded Gaza from the air and used ground troops to divide the coastal enclave in two.

LONDON: US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Tuesday spoke with Egyptian Minister of Defense Gen. Mohamed Ahmed Zaki, the Pentagon said.
The two discussed efforts to bolster security in the Middle East following an attack by the Gaza-based Hamas group on Israel on Oct. 7 that followed a month-long retaliatory assault by Israeli forces.
“The secretary expressed appreciation for Egypt’s work to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and the safe evacuation of US citizens from Gaza,” the Department of Defense said in a statement.