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The United Nations has said “there is already clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed” by Hamas and the Israeli military since 7 October and that it is gathering evidence for potential prosecutions.
All parties involved in the conflict are governed by a body of law drawn from a system of conventions, treaties and war crimes tribunal rulings known as “international humanitarian law” or the “law of armed conflict”.
Continue reading...IDF says it struck 300 targets this week and killed ‘numerous’ militants, including Hamas commander
Israeli tanks and infantry have targeted tunnel entrances and rocket launch positions in fresh clashes with Hamas around Gaza City and in the south of the enclave.
The fighting on Tuesday came amid renewed hope that significant quantities of aid would reach beleaguered Palestinian civilians in the south via the Rafah crossing with Egypt. A World Health Organization official in Geneva said on Tuesday that a “public health catastrophe” was imminent in Gaza.
Continue reading...Some of the 200 British or dual nationals in strip tell of life amid Israel’s attack and the communication blackout
When Musheir El-Farra climbs into bed in Gaza each night, he cannot get the sounds of people screaming out of his head.
Since last week, the British civil engineer has been plagued by memories of an Israeli bomb attack on a residential block in Khan Younis in which, he said, 16 of his relatives were killed.
Continue reading...One of the first policy actions under the new speaker Mike Johnson is a partisan bill despite Joe Biden’s request for $106bn in joint aid
Republicans in the US House of Representatives on Monday introduced a plan to provide $14.3bn in aid to Israel by cutting funding for the Internal Revenue Service, setting up a showdown with Democrats who control the Senate.
In one of the first major policy actions under new House speaker Mike Johnson, House Republicans unveiled a standalone supplemental spending bill only for Israel, despite Joe Biden’s request for a $106bn package that would include aid for Israel, Ukraine and border security.
Continue reading...Prime minister rejects ceasefire calls, saying army’s advance in Gaza puts pressure on Hamas ‘monsters’
Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a ceasefire in Gaza, declaring “this is a time for war”, as he hailed the rescue of a hostage as evidence that Israel’s military offensive can free Israeli captives while delivering crushing blows to Hamas.
The Israeli prime minister congratulated the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and security agency Shin Bet for freeing Ori Megidish, an army private, but Israeli joy was tempered by a Hamas video of three other captives that remain in captivity.
Continue reading...Ori Megidish said to have been freed as Hamas issues video of three others still in captivity
Israeli forces have announced the liberation of a hostage in Gaza hours after Hamas released a video of three other hostages who remain in captivity.
Ori Megidish, an Israel Defence Forces soldier, was freed during an escalating offensive in Gaza, the IDF and the internal security agency Shin Bet said in a joint statement on Monday night. It said she had undergone medical checks and was doing well.
Continue reading...Witnesses report Salah al-Din Road cut as Israel expands assault, in apparent effort to divide strip in two
Israeli tanks and infantry have advanced on Gaza City from two directions, with tanks reported to be on the main north-south road, in an apparent effort to cut the strip into two.
Reports in the Hebrew media, statements from Hamas and Palestinian witness accounts, described Israeli armour operating close to the Mediterranean coast in the north of Gaza in an area where Hamas said it was engaged in heavy fighting.
Continue reading...Suella Braverman will meet police and national security officials at No 10 to discuss ‘accelerated’ risk
UK ministers will hold an emergency meeting of its Cobra committee amid concerns that the Israel-Gaza conflict has raised the possibility of a domestic terrorist incident.
The home secretary, Suella Braverman, will meet national security officials and police at No 10 on Monday to assess the security risk after the deadly Hamas attack on Israel more than three weeks ago.
Continue reading...Reports of fierce clashes inside Gaza as the ‘second phase’ of the Israeli military’s war against Hamas continues
Israeli troops backed by tanks have expanded their operations inside Gaza amid reports of fierce air and and artillery strikes in the enclave’s north, as nearly three dozen trucks entered through the territory’s southern border on Sunday.
Hamas confirmed it was engaged in “heavy fighting” with Israeli troops inside northern Gaza on Sunday, as besieged residents were again warned by Israel to flee southward.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Mohammad Shtayyeh calls for a ‘comprehensive, peaceful vision’ and ceasefire in Gaza
The Palestinian Authority will not return to governing Gaza after the Israel-Hamas conflict without a comprehensive agreement that includes the West Bank in a Palestinian state, the authority’s prime minister has said.
Israeli civilian and military officials have said their plan for the end of the Gaza war is to have some form of transitional authority rule the territory, perhaps involving Arab states, leading to the restoration of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was ousted from Gaza in a 2007 Hamas coup.
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The UN security council scheduled an emergency meeting on Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza on Monday afternoon at the request of the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council, according to a report by Associated Press.
Israeli airstrikes have hit areas around Gaza’s largest hospital, destroying roads leading to the facility, which is a major shelter for Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment, residents have told Associated Press.
Continue reading...Scottish first minister expresses relief after communications were cut off during Israeli bombardment
Scotland’s first minister has expressed relief after discovering his parents-in-law in Gaza are alive, although they have run out of clean drinking water.
Humza Yousaf said the welcome news had come through on Sunday morning, hours after describing his worries about whether they were alive or dead following the imposition by Israel of a communication blackout in Gaza on Friday.
Continue reading...From magazine editors to Hollywood agents, supporters of Palestinians experiencing widespread rebuke
A rising number of prominent US figures have faced discipline over controversial public comments they have made about the Palestinian cause, as attacks by Israel on Gaza after the 7 October massacre of Israelis by Hamas fighters intensified.
David Velasco, the editor in chief of Artforum magazine, was reportedly fired after the magazine published an open letter in response to the war.
Continue reading...Head of refugee agency says wheat, flour and hygiene supplies taken as Israel continues its bombardment
Order is beginning to collapse in the besieged Gaza Strip after thousands of desperate people raided UN warehouses in search of food, as the international criminal court’s top prosecutor said impeding relief supplies to the population may constitute a crime under the court’s jurisdiction.
Wheat, flour and hygiene supplies were taken from on Saturday from four UN-run centres across the blockaded 25- by 7-mile strip, home to more than 2 million trapped people, Thomas White, Gaza director for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said on Sunday.
A UN peacekeeper on the Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon was injured in cross-border fire, the world body said.
Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron “stressed the importance of getting urgent humanitarian support” into Gaza.
Jack Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said the US believed “there should be humanitarian pauses to get hostages out, potentially to get aid in”.
A delegation of families of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas urged President Isaac Herzog to keep their plight at the top of the political agenda.
Continue reading...Mahmoud Abu Amir is among thousands of Palestinians frantically trying to locate their loved ones from afar
For Mahmoud Abu Amir, the war in his native Gaza began on Monday 9 October. An Israeli airstrike flattened a large area in the Jabalia refugee camp where he spent most of his life, demolishing the apartment block that was sheltering most of his family including his wife, Mayar, and their two young children.
Two days earlier, Hamas militants had stormed towns and kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip, killing 1,400 Israelis and taking at least 200 more hostage. When Abu Amir called his family that day to check on them, “it was a shock”, he said. “No one expected this to happen. But my wife, and my entire family were dead scared. They knew something would happen to them. They live near the border and they knew they would pay the price.”
Continue reading...Half of young Americans are skeptical of US support for Israel, and campus protesters demand a ceasefire in Gaza
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
On Wednesday night, Joe Biden basked in the pageantry of a state dinner – white-jacketed violinists, golden chandeliers dotted with pink roses, a vivid wall display of 3D paper flowers. But soon after toasting the Australian prime minister in a pavilion on the White House south lawn, the US president had to step away to be briefed on a deadly mass shooting in Maine.
Continue reading...Scotland’s first minister speaks of family worry after Israel cuts off population of Gaza from communication with world
Scotland’s first minister has said he does not know if his parents-in-law who are trapped in Gaza are dead or alive after Israel knocked out communications there.
Humza Yousaf said he and his wife, Nadia, are “desperately worried” and that she is “numb” as they try to find out news about her parents.
Continue reading...Communications blackout cuts off stream of Snapchat updates from residents about life in the conflict
• Israel and Hamas at war – live updates
Communications went dark in Gaza on Friday, but the few voices that emerged described a night of intense airstrikes and panic among a population fearing that the outage signified a new stage in the violence.
The social media platform Snapchat has been used since the war began by some Gazans to post images from their lives, with videos showing people in long queues at bakeries or for water, or gathered in crowds at hospitals and schools.
Continue reading...As Israel’s ground operation intensifies, World Health Organization issues an urgent statement saying it is unable to cope with a total blackout
Gaza was plunged into darkness, isolation and violence on Saturday night, its communications with the outside world almost entirely cut, as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced his country was entering “the second stage” of what was likely to be a long and difficult war against Hamas.
In a televised press conference Netanyahu told Israelis: “We have unanimously approved the widening of the ground invasion … Our objective is singular: to defeat the murderous enemy. We declared ‘never again’, and we reiterate: ‘never again, now’.”
Continue reading...Polls suggest that four in five people blame the Israeli government for the 7 October massacres and over half want the PM to resign
In October 2011 Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted by the Palestinian group Hamas and held for five years in the blockaded Gaza Strip, walked through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, accompanied by militants wearing suicide vests.
His release was widely celebrated across Israel; in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, so too was the agreed exchange of 1,027 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Foremost among them was Yahya Sinwar, who returned home to Gaza, eventually becoming Hamas’s most important leader in the territory. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, then in his second term, did face some criticism for the starkly asymmetric deal. The daily Jerusalem Post said at the time that “any such exchange, however humane to Shalit and his family, would imperil thousands of other Israelis”.
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