Category Archives: Israel-Gaza war

Columbia alumni rip up diplomas to protest activist Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest

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Group of Sipa graduates demonstrate against government’s jailing of graduate student, who spoke up for Palestinians

A handful of alumni from Columbia University’s school of international and public affairs (Sipa) ripped their diplomas in a show of protest against the federal government’s jailing of graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s over his activism for Palestinians.

On Saturday, instead of participating in the university’s annual Sipa alumni day, a few dozen alumni and students gathered outside campus as part of a protest organized by Sipa’s and Barnard Alumni for Palestine groups.

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Netanyahu says he is ‘willing’ to reach deal to free Gaza hostages

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Prime minister says military pressure is working, as he rejects claims that Israel is not serious about negotiations

Rejecting claims from Hamas and Israeli protesters that his government is not engaged in serious negotiations aimed at securing the release of those held captive in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he was committed to reaching an agreement to free the hostages and military pressure had been effective.

“We are willing,” Israel’s prime minister told a cabinet meeting. “We are negotiating under fire” and “can see cracks beginning to appear” in what Hamas has demanded in its negotiations, he said.

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‘He insisted we take him to the graves’: the Palestinian civilians coming home to catastrophe

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Alaa Abu Zeid only discovered his wife and children had been killed after his release from an Israeli prison. His is a story repeated across Gaza

• ‘They don’t want them to know anything’: Gaza civilians held in Israel not told families had been killed

More than a year after his abduction by Israeli soldiers, the first thing Alaa Abu Zeid wanted to do on his return to Gaza was hold his wife and children. He didn’t know that Ali, his brother, would be the only person waiting when he arrived in Khan Younis earlier this month: Alaa’s wife, Hala, and all five of the couple’s children had been killed in an Israeli airstrike last summer.

Abu Zeid, 48, the headteacher of a primary school funded by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) in Bureij in central Gaza, was arrested along with dozens of other men when Israeli troops raided the school turned shelter in December 2023. He would never see his family again.

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Hamas reportedly agrees to release five living Israeli hostages for ceasefire

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Militants release video of Israeli captive Elkana Bohbot pleading for freedom as they seek a 50-day halt to conflict

Hamas has allegedly agreed to free five living Israeli hostages in exchange for a 50-day ceasefire, as the militant group released a video of a hostage making an appeal for his freedom.

Hamas’s chief, Khalil al-Hayya, reportedly said on Saturday that the militant group expressed willingness to release the five hostages over the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, which begins on Sunday, after a proposal it received two days ago from Egypt and Qatar, Reuters has reported.

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Israel admits firing at ambulances in Gaza after Palestinians say rescuers missing in Rafah

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Body of team leader found almost a week after six rescuers went missing, Gaza’s civil defence agency says

Israel’s military admitted on Saturday it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles”, with Hamas condemning it as a “war crime” that killed at least one person.

The incident took place last Sunday in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in the southern city of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border.

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Tufts student detained by Ice may not be deported without court order, judge rules

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Rümeysa Öztürk was taken from street by masked, plainclothes officers in a Boston-area suburb on Tuesday

A Tufts University student who was detained by US immigration authorities this week, in an arrest that caused widespread outrage, cannot be deported without a court order, a US judge ordered on Friday.

Rümeysa Öztürk, 30, was detained by masked, plainclothes officers as she walked in a Boston-area suburb on Tuesday, an incident that was captured on surveillance footage that has since gone viral. Öztürk, who is being threatened with deportation to Turkey, is a Fulbright scholar and doctoral student in the US with a visa.

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Israel parliament defies protests to pass law tightening grip over judges

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Opposition parties say political control of appointments will make judges subject to politicians and undermine democracy

Israel’s parliament has passed a law expanding elected officials’ power to appoint judges, in defiance of a years-long protest against Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to drive through judicial changes.

The approval of the bill, which opposition parties say will make judges subject to the will of politicians, comes as Netanyahu’s government is locked in a standoff with the supreme court over its attempts to dismiss the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara and Ronen Bar, the head of the internal security agency.

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Netanyahu repeats threat to seize territory in Gaza as anti-Hamas protests continue

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Israeli PM warns of seizure of territories and ‘other measures’ if Hamas refuses to release remaining hostages

Benjamin Netanyahu has repeated Israeli threats to seize territory in Gaza if Hamas refuses to release the remaining Israeli hostages, as, for the second consecutive day, hundreds of Palestinians joined protests against the militant group and demanding the end of the war.

The Israeli prime minister’s warning came a week after Israel resumed its military operation in the territory, shattering the relative calm of a January ceasefire with Hamas.

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Hundreds join protest against Hamas in northern Gaza

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Demonstrators shout ‘Hamas out’ and carry banners saying ‘we want to live in peace’

Hundreds of Palestinians have joined protests in northern Gaza, shouting anti-Hamas slogans and calling for an end to the war with Israel, in what has been described as the largest protest against the militant group inside the territory since the 7 October attacks.

Videos and photos shared on social media late on Tuesday showed hundreds of people, mostly men, chanting “Hamas out” and “Hamas terrorists” in Beit Lahiya, where the crowd had gathered a week after the Israeli army resumed its intense bombing of Gaza after nearly two months of a truce.

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Israeli strike at Gaza hospital kills five, including senior Hamas figure

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Ismail Barhoum and medics die in attack, which Israel says was based on extensive intelligence

An Israeli airstrike on Sunday night hit the largest hospital in southern Gaza, killing five people, including a Hamas political leader.

The Gaza health ministry said the strike hit the surgery department at Nasser hospital in the city of Khan Younis. The Israeli military said its attack followed extensive intelligence and used precise munitions to minimise harm at the site.

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Gaza medics issue malnutrition alert as total Israeli blockade enters fourth week

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Israel continues to batter territory in renewed offensive as death toll from nearly 18 months of war passes 50,000

Malnutrition is spreading in Gaza, medics and aid workers in the devastated Palestinian territory are warning, as a total Israeli blockade of all supplies enters its fourth week.

There has been no sign that Israel will open entry points to allow essential aid to flow or ease its new offensive in Gaza, which started on Tuesday with a wave of airstrikes that killed 400 people, mostly civilians, ending two months of relative calm. On Sunday, Palestinian officials said the total death toll from nearly 18 months of conflict had passed 50,000.

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Gaza’s ceasfire brought hope, but it was the calm before a brutal storm

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New strikes are ‘just a beginning’ said Netanyahu, after Trump inspires Israel to seize territory with massive military onslaught

In Gaza this weekend, the mood is darker than it has been at perhaps any time in this long, appalling war. Last Tuesday Israeli warplanes, tanks, artillery, drones and ships launched a wave of strikes, shattering the increasingly fragile pause in hostilities that had brought respite to the devastated territory for nearly two months. The ceasefire had also brought hope which, Palestinians in Gaza said, made the return to violence that much more unbearable.

In a video statement last Wednesday, Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, called on 2.3 million people in Gaza to “banish Hamas”, saying “the alternative is complete destruction and ruin”.

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Israel to ‘seize more ground’ and warns Hamas it will annex parts of Gaza

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Defence minister issues threat as IDF intensifies offensive with ‘non-stop’ overnight attacks across territory

Israel’s defence minister said he had instructed the military to “seize more ground” in Gaza and threatened to annex part of the territory unless Hamas released 59 Israeli hostages still held in the devastated territory.

Israel Katz’s warning on Friday came as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intensified the new offensive launched on Tuesday, when a wave of airstrikes shattered the truce that had brought a fragile and relative calm since mid-January.

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Netanyahu disputes court order freezing decision to fire Shin Bet chief

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PM says government will decide who heads domestic spy agency as protests against Ronen Bar dismissal continue

Benjamin Netanyahu is locked in a fierce battle with Israel’s judicial system after the supreme court blocked his attempt to fire the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency.

Amid protests against ministers’ vote to sack Ronen Bar, the top court on Friday froze the decision, with the order remaining in place until the court can hear petitions filed by the opposition and an NGO against the dismissal of the chief of the Shin Bet.

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Who is Ronen Bar, the sacked chief of Israel’s Shin Bet security service?

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Former special forces soldier made enemies after disagreements with far-right factions in Netanyahu government

Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s powerful internal security service, the Shin Bet, may seem an unlikely rebel.

A former special forces soldier who holds degrees from Tel Aviv and Harvard universities, Bar has devoted three decades of his working life to the service of the state. His frame is lean, greying hair close shaved, features gaunt, manner reserved and speech moderate.

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Judge bars Trump administration from deporting Indian academic over political views

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Badar Khan Suri, who teaches at Georgetown University, being held incommunicado in Louisiana ‘staging center’

A US district judge has barred Donald Trump’s administration from deporting an Indian academic from Georgetown University after the Department of Homeland Security accused him of having ties to Hamas.

On Thursday, US district judge Patricia Giles in Alexandria, Virginia, prohibited federal officials from deporting Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at the university, in an order that is to remain in effect until it is lifted by the court, Reuters reports.

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Thousands protest in Israel over ‘attack on democracy’ by Netanyahu

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Protesters accuse PM of continuing Gaza war for political reasons and ignoring plight of hostages still held by Hamas

Tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to call for a new ceasefire in Gaza and to protest against what they say is an attack on the country’s democracy by the rightwing governing coalition of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Key highways have been blocked and police have made at least 12 arrests amid heated scenes in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. More protests were expected in the coming days as the campaign “gathers momentum and energy”, campaigners said.

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Israel launches ‘limited ground operation’ to retake Netzarim corridor in Gaza

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UN calls for investigation after staff member among 20 people reportedly killed in renewed airstrikes

Israeli forces have launched a “limited ground operation” to retake the Netzarim corridor, a newly widened road protected by fortified bunkers that divides Gaza and is seen as essential to controlling the devastated Palestinian territory.

The move is a significant escalation of Israel’s new offensive in Gaza and came less than 36 hours after a massive wave of airstrikes that killed more than 400, including 183 children and 94 women, the health ministry there said.

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Israeli strikes latest bloody chapter in war of extraordinary civilian casualties

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International rules of combat to deter impact on noncombatants have been loosened or ignored – and other regimes may follow

It is a casualty rate that would have unimaginable before the start of the Israel-Hamas war. More than 400 Palestinians have been reported killed after 10 hours of resumed Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday, including, according to one early report, at least six members of one family in an attack on a car east of Khan Younis.

Though it is too soon to determine how many noncombatants died in attacks that Israel says were directed at Hamas military commanders and political officials (casualty totals from Gaza’s health ministry do not distinguish combatants from the uninvolved), the likelihood is that civilians will have been killed in large numbers.

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Netanyahu banks on political dividends as he restarts Gaza war

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Israeli prime minister bows to pressure from far right over majority who prioritise deals to bring back hostages

As the ceasefire in Gaza extended from days into weeks, and newly freed hostages began sharing grim details of their captivity, Benjamin Netanyahu’s political room for manoeuvre seemed to shrink.

He was caught between the far-right parties propping up his government, keen to return to war in Gaza, and the majority of Israelis who prioritised the fate of the remaining hostages over the “total defeat” of Hamas demanded by their prime minister.

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