What would Israel look like under a new leader – and who would benefit?

Israelis are politically divided, but there’s widespread agreement that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government needs to go

For years, the newspaper Israel Hayom has been known as the “Bibiton”. A Hebrew portmanteau, it means “the paper of Bibi”, the nickname for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was founded by the late billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as the mouthpiece for Netanyahu.

Last week, the head of news at the paper, Uri Dagon, signalled a breaking of the ranks, calling on the prime minister to “lead us to victory and then go”, taking aim at the “nonstop political bickering while the war is raging”. In Israel’s fractured and fractious politics, it signalled the cohering of a rare agreement across party lines: the political era of Netanyahu was staggering to its bitter end.

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Israel-Hamas fake news thrives on poorly regulated online platforms

Claims on X and Telegram include downplaying 7 October Hamas attack and allegations Palestinians are faking scenes of suffering

Disinformation has flourished across a range of online platforms in the month since Hamas launched its bloody attack on Israel, fuelled by weak content regulation on X, formerly Twitter, and Telegram and at times propelled by state actors.

Widely shared faked news and false claims include efforts to downplay the horror of Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October through to distasteful allegations that Palestinians, already under heavy bombardment, are faking scenes of violence.

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Macron calls for end to killing of civilians in Gaza as international pressure on Israel grows

French president’s comments come as aid agency Doctors Without Borders says situation at main Gaza hospital ‘catastrophic’

French president Emmanuel Macron has called on Israel to stop killing babies, women and elderly people in Gaza as the country comes under mounting international pressure, including from its main ally the US, to do more to protect Palestinian civilians.

Macron’s comments came hours before aid agency Doctors Without Borders said it was “extremely concerned” about the safety of patients and medical staff at al-Shifa hospital – the Gaza Strip’s largest – around which fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas was raging on Saturday.

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UN warns violence against civilians in Sudan ‘verging on pure evil’

UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan says war between army and paramilitaries is ‘horrific’

Violence against civilians in Sudan is “verging on pure evil,” a senior UNofficial has warned, as fighting escalates seven months into the war between the army and paramilitaries.

“We keep saying that the situation is horrific and grim. But, frankly, we are running out of words to describe the horror of what is happening in Sudan,” said Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan.

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Israel kills seven more Hezbollah fighters on border with Lebanon

Iranian foreign minister says wider regional conflict inevitable as death toll among militant group rises to 78

Israel has killed a further seven Hezbollah fighters on its northern border with Lebanon, taking the total death toll of Hezbollah fighters to 78 since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October.

The rising death toll in Lebanon and the killing of 18 Palestinians by Israeli security forces in the West Bank on Thursday prompted the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, to declare that a wider regional escalation of the conflict was inevitable.

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Pro-Palestine march will be one of UK’s biggest ever protests, organisers predict

Police to put tight controls on protesters’ movements with hundreds of thousands expected at event on Armistice Day

The organisers of the pro-Palestine march due to take place in London on Armistice Day believe “hundreds of thousands” of people will turn out for what they say will be one of Britain’s biggest days of mass protest.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan police said the policing of the remembrance weekend would be “far greater and more complex than we’ve delivered before” and that officers would draw on “an extensive set of powers to prevent any disruption whatsoever”, with tight controls put on the movements of protesters.

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‘Our wish is to be martyred’: defiant Hamas fighters count their losses in West Bank

Hundreds of men, some armed, march with bodies of the dead through Jenin as violence escalates

At 8.30 on Friday morning, Jenin’s morgue was crowded. Outside, dozens of young men in black baseball caps, T-shirts and jeans stood quietly, some with their weapons between their knees, their green Hamas headbands tied tight across their foreheads. Older men sat in front of shuttered shops.

Inside, a metal door was opened and a corpse wrapped in the green flag of Hamas was drawn out on a stretcher. A teenager with an assault rifle in one hand touched the dead man lightly on the forehead, then helped to shoulder the stretcher and with five others set out through the throng, down the rubble-strewn streets to the home of Hamed Fayed, where the women of the family waited.

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Civilian death rate in Israeli airstrikes higher than in past conflicts, study finds

Monitoring group says increased fatality average in latest Gaza air campaign may indicate shift in strategy

Each recorded fatal Israeli airstrike on Gaza since 7 October has caused an average of 10.1 civilian deaths, a monitoring group has said, amid warnings that reported civilian casualty figures are likely to be an underestimate.

The fatality average is far higher than in the three previous Israeli air campaigns in Gaza, of which the most deadly was Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, where the equivalent figure was 2.5.

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Gaza’s largest hospital being bombarded, WHO says

Attack comes as Blinken laments Palestinian death toll and Netanyahu says Israel does not seek to govern territory

The largest hospital in Gaza, where up to 50,000 people are sheltering, is facing bombardment, the World Health Organization has said, as the US’s top diplomat said “far too many Palestinians have been killed” in the war.

Palestinian officials said Israel launched airstrikes on or near four hospitals overnight and on Friday morning, as the territory’s precarious health system struggled to cope with thousands of people wounded or displaced in Israel’s war against Hamas militants.

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UK couple on holiday in Egypt died of carbon monoxide poisoning, coroner rules

Susan and John Cooper, from Burnley, fell ill after hotel room next door was sprayed for bed bug infestation

A woman whose parents were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning during a holiday to Egypt has said her family is “broken without them”.

John and Susan Cooper, aged 69 and 63 respectively, died after falling ill in their hotel room after a pesticide was sprayed in the room next door to kill bed bugs, a coroner ruled on Friday.

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Spanish police investigate possible Iran link to shooting of former politician

Alejandro Vidal-Quadras told police from hospital bed of his links to exiled Iranian opposition, source says

The Spanish rightwing former politician Alejandro Vidal-Quadras is recovering in hospital after being shot in the face on a central Madrid street.

Police said they were not ruling out any theories for the attack on Thursday afternoon, including a possible link to the former European lawmaker’s ties with the Iranian opposition.

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Israel-Hamas war live: US says ‘far too many’ Palestinians have died as Gaza’s health ministry says toll is over 11,000

US secretary of state says country has proposed longer ‘humanitarian pauses’ to Israel; Hamas-run health ministry says 11,078 people have been killed

It’s approaching mid-morning in Gaza now. The Guardian and other outlets have been reporting that the White House announced Israel would begin to implement four-hour “humanitarian pauses” in parts of northern Gaza to allow people to leave. However, there is yet to be a clear sign that this is taking place. Here are some scenes from the strip yesterday.

Here is our latest full report on recent developments in the Israel-Hamas war. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he isn’t seeking to govern Gaza, after earlier saying Israel may be responsible for its security indefinitely. It also includes reports of attacks on three hospitals in the territory, including the main Al Shifa hospital.

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ABC calls for apology after Bronwyn Bishop tells Sky the public broadcaster is ‘aligning’ itself with Nazi policies

Former Howard government minister tells Sharri Markson the ABC is ‘aligning themselves with policies in place with national socialism during world war two’

The ABC has lodged a formal complaint with Sky News Australia after Bronwyn Bishop said the public broadcaster was “aligning themselves with the policy of Germany’s national socialist party for the elimination of Jews” in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

A regular guest on Sky, the former Liberal senator was responding to the Sky News host Sharri Markson’s claim that the ABC was “so biased, so one-sided, so anti-Israel”.

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Israeli forces kill 18 Palestinians in daytime raid in West Bank

At least 20 others injured in Jenin city and refugee camp, as IDF says it is conducting counter-terrorism raids

Eighteen Palestinians have been killed and at least 20 others injured by the Israel Defence Forces during an hours-long daytime raid on Jenin city and its refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

In the latest escalation in violence on the West Bank, occurring against the background of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, the IDF said an airstrikehit an armed squad of men in the city.

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US says Israel to begin ‘humanitarian pauses’ to let people leave Gaza’s north

Thousands move south as Israeli forces inch closer to two big hospitals in north where many have sought refuge

Thousands of Palestinians continued to flee south from northern Gaza on Thursday as the White House announced that Israel would begin to implement four-hour “humanitarian pauses” in parts of the area to allow people to leave.

The US national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said the pauses would allow people to pass along two humanitarian corridors, which he described as “a significant first step”.

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Over half of UK nationals seeking to flee Gaza have left, Foreign Office says

Distressing cases of families being split up prompt criticism officials are not doing enough to keep them together

More than half of the British nationals seeking to escape Gaza for Egypt have managed to do so, but there are still distressing cases of families being split up, the Foreign Office has confirmed.

It said more than 150 British nationals and families had crossed into Egypt, and that the total number that came forward seeking help to escape was in the low hundreds, a figure that had not changed in recent days.

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Israel to start ‘pauses’ in fighting – as it happened

This blog is now closed

Two Israelis were shot overnight into Thursday and moderately wounded while driving in the northern West Bank, the Associated Press reports, citing Israeli media. A baby in the back seat of the car was unharmed, the reports said.

It was the second shooting attack on Israeli drivers in the West Bank in a week. On 2 November, an Israeli man was killed after his car was shot at, then crashed and overturned.

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Tens of thousands fleeing northern Gaza, says Israeli military, as WHO warns of disease risk

IDF says 50,000 people moved south on Wednesday, up from 15,000 a day earlier, claiming Hamas has lost control of the north; health organisation warns of ‘worrying trends’ in disease in Gaza

Tens of thousands of Palestinians fled northern Gaza on Wednesday, the Israel Defence Forces said, as the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of “worrying trends” in the risk of disease in the territory after weeks of Israeli airstrikes.

The accelerating exodus came as Israeli forces closed in on the centre of Gaza City, launching intense bombardments, and claimed that Hamas had lost control of the north of the territory.

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US forces targeted in broadest Iraq attacks since start of Israel-Hamas war

Armed drones attack two airbases and explosive device targets patrol in most widespread strikes in a single day

US forces were targeted in three attacks in Iraq on Thursday but suffered no casualties, security sources have said, in the most geographically widespread series of strikes on US assets in a single day since the Israel-Hamas conflict started.

Spokespeople for the US embassy in Baghdad and US-led international forces stationed in Iraq did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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China has a history of being pro-Palestinian, but now faces diplomatic conundrum

Rivalry with US and current of antisemitism are running up against Beijing’s increasing closeness to Israel

China was an early proponent of a ceasefire in Gaza and has called for wider talks on resolving the Palestinian question. But analysts say the situation is complicated, and it’s not clear what Beijing expects to achieve, and how it can get there.

Beijing has been a supporter of the Palestinians since the Mao era and long called for a two-state solution, but it is increasingly close to Israel, and is presenting itself as a neutral party that holds steadfast to a noninterference principle.

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