Latest three-month period to 24 April includes Israeli strike that killed three workers for British World Central Kitchen
UK government ministers have reviewed a further three months of the IDF’s presence in Gaza and found no reason to suspend arms exports to Israel.
The latest review of evidence examined Israel Defense Forces’ behaviour until 24 April, the Foreign Office said in a statement late on Friday.
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Here is an extract from a piece about a small group of Israelis stopping settlers obstructing aid trucks, by Lorenzo Tondo and Quique Kierszenbaum in Tarqumiya, with photographs by Alessio Mamo:
At approximately 10.30am on a scorching Monday, a group of five young Israeli settlers arrived at the Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the West Bank, where dozens of aid trucks bound for Gaza were expected.
Continue reading...Peace activists confronting settlers acknowledge they are ‘a minority within a minority’
At approximately 10.30am on a scorching Monday, a group of five young Israeli settlers arrived at the Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the West Bank, where dozens of aid trucks bound for Gaza were expected.
The settlers had received detailed information about the timing, location, and number of trucks that would pass through the checkpoint that morning. What they had not anticipated was that dozens of peace activists had also gathered in Tarqumiya with a specific mission: to prevent the settlers from blocking the vehicles and ensure that the aid continued its journey to Gaza.
Continue reading...Cairo seeks to keep lid on public anger and avoid escalation as IDF moves into Philadelphi corridor in breach of 1979 peace accord
Egypt has reacted with a wall of silence to the Israeli takeover of a buffer zone in southern Gaza, in apparent defiance of a decades-old peace agreement, as Cairo sought to keep a lid on simmering public anger while also avoiding an escalation in tensions with Israel.
Israel said on Wednesday that its forces had gained “operational” control over the Philadelphi corridor – the Israeli military’s code name for the 9-mile-long (14km) strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border. Under the terms of the 1979 peace accord between Egypt and Israel, each side is allowed to deploy only a small number of troops or border guards in a demilitarised zone that stretches along the entire Israel-Egypt border and encompasses the corridor.
Continue reading...Ahmed Herzallah, his wife and three children have been catapulted into the unknown after fleeing their destroyed home
In the darkened backroom of an Istanbul hotel packed with refugees from Gaza, the light from Ahmed Herzallah’s phone screen illuminates a picture of his destroyed home in Gaza City. The building, with its curved black-and-white striped exterior that wrapped around a street corner, used to be a place for celebration, where the family gathered together for birthday parties, graduation ceremonies or when his sisters visited home at the beginning of each summer.
The apartment building where Ahmed lived with his wife, children, parents, two brothers and their families was often filled with members of their extended family, the sound of singing, and the smell of homemade pastries and maftoul, a stew made of chicken and couscous. But the picture that he displayed on his phone was spliced with another, showing the entire block reduced to rubble. His extended family is now scattered around Gaza or exiled across the globe.
Continue reading...The IDF says that it is in ‘operational’ control of the buffer zone on Egypt’s border, a move which risks complicating relations with Cairo, amid Rafah offensive
Israel is in effective control of Gaza’s entire land border after taking control of a buffer zone along the border with Egypt, Israel’s military has said, a move that risks complicating its relationship with Egypt.
In a televised briefing on Wednesday, chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces had gained “operational” control over the Philadelphi Corridor, using the Israeli military’s code name for the 14km-long corridor along the Gaza Strip’s only border with Egypt.
Continue reading...Israel is among those arguing that international court of justice directive is ambivalent and far from a blanket order to halt its offensive
Israel has asserted that Sunday’s attack, which set ablaze a crowded refugee camp in Rafah and killed 45 Palestinians, is not in breach of last week’s International Court of Justice ruling – a directive widely seen to have instructed Israel to completely stop its military offensive in the southern Gaza city.
The apparent contradiction reflects a fierce and continuing debate over the ambivalent language of the ruling – and the placing of a single comma in a key sentence.
Continue reading...Sheltering displaced Palestinians describe the fear and grief caused by Sunday’s airstrike that killed 35 people
It took nearly half an hour for the first ambulances and firefighters to reach the stretch of blazing tents in the Kuwait peace camp in Rafah on Sunday night. The crowding and rubble that slowed the passage of emergency vehicles fuelled the spread of flames through the temporary homes of the displaced.
Zuhair, a 36-year-old lawyer, had been sitting on a road near his own tent, watching the news with friends as the last glimmers of twilight faded from the sky, when an explosion shook the area at about 8.45pm.
Continue reading...President says ‘UN cannot even protect its own staff’ and hits out at fellow Muslim-majority countries for failing to agree a collective stance
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Bethan McKernan is Jerusalem correspondent for the Guardian.
The US state department has said that it opposes “threats or intimidation” against members of the international criminal court (ICC) in the wake of the Guardian’s reporting on Israel’s secret “war” of surveillance, hacking and threats aimed at sabotaging The Hague’s Israel and Palestine investigation.
Continue reading...Washington says it is also monitoring Israel’s inquiry into attack on Sunday that killed at least 45 people in Gaza camp
The Biden administration has said recent Israeli operations and attacks in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah do not constitute a major ground operation that crosses any US red lines, adding that it is also closely monitoring an investigation into Sunday’s deadly strike on a tent camp.
Speaking after Israeli tanks were seen near al-Awda mosque, a landmark in central Rafah, the national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters the US was not turning a “blind eye” to the plight of Palestinian civilians.
Continue reading...Crucial supply line for aid deliveries to starving Palestinians cut off and will take at least a week to repair, Pentagon says
US aid efforts for Gaza have suffered an embarrassing setback after the temporary pier built by the military broke apart in heavy seas, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
The $320m pier was intended to provide a crucial supply line for aid deliveries by sea to reach starving Palestinians and alleviate a humanitarian catastrophe. Now the effort is on hold for at least a week.
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Medical workers in Gaza ‘exhausted’ and their message is not getting through, the MSF chief has said.
When asked about the types and extent of injuries arising out of an Israeli airstrike in Rafah that left at least 45 people dead, Dr Christos Christou, the Médecins Sans Frontières International president, says his organisation’s medical facility received more than 128 patients, some of whom, after being stabilised, have nowhere to turn for further surgical treatment.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Investigation reveals how intelligence agencies tried to derail war crimes prosecution, with Netanyahu ‘obsessed’ with intercepts
When the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, he issued a cryptic warning: “I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this court must cease immediately.”
Karim Khan did not provide specific details of attempts to interfere in the ICC’s work, but he noted a clause in the court’s foundational treaty that made any such interference a criminal offence. If the conduct continued, he added, “my office will not hesitate to act”.
Continue reading...US urges Israel to take ‘precaution’ to protect civilians after trike that killed at least 45 people as EU calls for Israel to explain offensive
Lisa O’Carroll is the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent
Germany’s foreign minister has said Germany supports the revival of a former EU security border security mission for border protection in Rafah.
We are all experiencing how terrible the situation is. This suffering cannot go on for another day. This has once again prompted the international court of justice to make urgent decisions, to initiate provisional measures to achieve a humanitarian ceasefire. For this humanitarian ceasefire is what we as Europeans, the German federal government [are calling for].
We will do everything we can to achieve this, however difficult the situation is at the moment. That also means thinking again about how humanitarian aid and the worsening situation in Gaza can come in. We now have the situation where Rafah is closed again.
Continue reading...Labor senator the first government member to publicly voice outrage over strike in southern Gaza that killed 35 people
Labor senator Fatima Payman has labelled Israel’s strike on a displaced person’s camp in Rafah “deplorable”, calling on her own government to stop trade with Israel and recognise a Palestinian state.
Payman is the first government member to publicly voice outrage over the strike on Rafah’s Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood, in southern Gaza. At least 35 people were killed, according to Palestinian medics.
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Al Jazeera are reporting that an Israeli military strike has targeted a family home in Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood, killing a woman and injuring other people. It attributes the information to “colleagues on the ground”.
The publication, citing the Palestinian news agency Wafa, reports that “numerous other neighbourhoods of Gaza City have come under heavy artillery shelling … including Sheikh Ajlin, Tal al-Hawa and Zeitoun”.
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Power outages have forced the shutdown of the generators at Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deri el-Balah in the Gaza Strip. A hospital spokesperson, Khalil al-Deqran, told Al Jazeera that doctors are unable to use many of its facilities and are treating patients manually.
“This will lead to the death of so many sick and wounded people”, said al-Deqran, who said that some of the patients are being treated on the floor.
Continue reading...Having initially vowed to oppose any offensive, Washington and London are showing signs of having backed down
The US and the UK will reject the international court of justice order directing Israel to end its offensive on Rafah after slowly blurring their red lines that once stated that they could not support a military offensive in Rafah.
The line was first adapted by saying they could not support a major ground offensive without a credible plan to protect civilians, but since then the definition of what constitutes a major offensive has become more flexible.
Continue reading...ICJ president says humanitarian situation in Gaza’s southernmost city is now classified as ‘disastrous’
The UN’s top court has ordered Israel to halt its assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah in a ruling that will ratchet up the pressure on the increasingly isolated country.
The president of the international court of justice, Nawaf Salam, said the humanitarian situation in Rafah had deteriorated further and was now classified as “disastrous”, meaning the ICJ’s previously issued provisional measures were insufficient.
Continue reading...Court order is a warning that Israel’s offensive in Gaza risks creating conditions that could be framed as potentially genocidal
The provisional measures issued by the international court of justice ordering an immediate halt to Israel’s military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah represent the starkest warning yet to Israel that its offensive risks creating conditions that could be framed as potentially genocidal.
The ruling, agreed by a majority of 13-2 judges, almost exclusively cited UN agencies and senior officials – including the UN’s secretary general – to paint a picture of the disastrous situation facing Palestinians in Gaza, half of whom are children.
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