Category Archives: Israel-Gaza war

Israel cuts off humanitarian supplies to Gaza as it seeks to change ceasefire deal

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Netanyahu wants Hamas to allow for release of hostages without troop withdrawal, in plan Israel says came from US

Israel has cut off humanitarian supplies to Gaza in an effort to pressure Hamas into accepting a change in the ceasefire agreement to allow for the release of hostages without an Israeli troop withdrawal.

The office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday it was imposing a blockade on Gaza because Hamas would not accept a plan which it claimed had been put forward by the US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to extend phase one of the ceasefire and continue to release hostages, and postpone phase two, which envisaged an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

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Gaza ceasefire talks have made no progress on second phase, Hamas says

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Negotiations on next part of truce have begun in Egypt, but militant group has accused Israel of procrastination

The latest round of talks on the second phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has yet to make any progress and it was unclear whether they would resume on Saturday, a senior Hamas official has said.

The ceasefire took effect on 19 January after more than 15 months of war following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, the deadliest in the country’s history.

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Israel proposes Gaza plan that gives it tighter military control than before war

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Plan for IDF-protected ‘humanitarian hubs’ to selectively issue aid casts doubt on Israeli intent to withdraw

The Israeli military has presented the UN and aid organisations with a plan for running Gaza that involves Israel having tighter control than it did before the war, according to humanitarian officials, casting doubt on whether Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has any intention of carrying out a military withdrawal.

At meetings with UN representatives on Wednesday and with officials from other agencies on Thursday, Cogat, the army unit given the task of delivering aid to the occupied territories, outlined a scheme of distributing supplies through tightly managed logistics hubs to vetted Palestinian recipients.

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Netanyahu sends delegation to Egypt to continue Gaza ceasefire talks with Hamas

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Israeli team heads to Cairo as end of deal’s first phase approaches, but big differences remain between two sides

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has announced that he has instructed a delegation to depart for Egypt for talks on continuing the ceasefire in the war with Hamas in Gaza, two days before the first stage of the fragile agreement expires.

The Israeli team is scheduled to leave Cairo, Egypt’s capital, late on Thursday, a statement from the prime minister’s office said. The announcement was made a day after Hamas handed over the bodies of four Israeli hostages, the last due to be released under the terms of the six-week first phase of the deal agreed in January.

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New York governor orders removal of Palestinian studies job posting at Cuny

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Hunter College faculty and staff union condemns Kathy Hochul’s order to take down listing, calling it ‘overreach of authority’

The New York governor, Kathy Hochul ordered the City University of New York (Cuny) to immediately remove a job posting advertising a Palestinian studies professor role at the state university system’s Hunter College.

In the job listing, Hunter College wrote that the institution is seeking “a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality”.

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Israel ‘wants to extend first phase of Gaza ceasefire deal’ as talks stall

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Israel ready to resume fighting if there is no progress in crucial talks this week, reports say

Israel is seeking to extend the first stage of the ceasefire agreement in the war with Hamas in Gaza and is prepared to resume fighting if there is no progress in crucial talks this week, according to reports.

Israel’s Kan Radio, along with Ma’ariv, a daily newspaper, reported on Tuesday that informal talks were under way aimed at extending the first 42-day stage of the ceasefire, which expires on Saturday. Official internationally mediated negotiations on how to implement the second stage – which would involve a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territory – were supposed to begin weeks ago, but have been repeatedly postponed as the fragile truce has lurched from crisis to crisis.

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ICC urged to investigate Biden for ‘aiding and abetting’ Gaza war crimes

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US-based nonprofit Dawn also accuses ex-secretary of state Antony Blinken and ex-Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin

A US-based nonprofit organization has urged the international criminal court to investigate former president Joe Biden and two of his cabinet members for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The request, submitted by the Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) last month but made public by the group on Monday, urges the ICC to investigate Biden, as well as former secretary of state Antony Blinken and former defense secretary Lloyd Austin, for their “accessorial roles in aiding and abetting, as well as intentionally contributing to, Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza”.

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Israel says West Bank operation will last for a year as it sends tanks to Jenin

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Continued operation in Palestinian territory will leave 40,000 displaced people unable to return home

Israel has sent tanks to the West Bank city of Jenin, in the first deployment of its kind in the area in more than two decades, as troops intensify operations in the territory that officials said will last at least a year.

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Sunday that the latest operation across the West Bank was expanding, and that troops would remain in the area’s urban hotspots “for the coming year”, meaning approximately 40,000 people displaced by the fighting will not be able to return to their homes.

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Israeli hostage only discovered fiancee had survived 7 October after his release

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Eliya Cohen spent more than 500 days in captivity fearing Ziv Abud had died in Hamas attacks in 2023

An Israeli hostage only discovered his fiancee had survived the 7 October attacks after his release on Saturday, Israeli media has reported.

Eliya Cohen had spent more than 500 days in captivity fearing his bride-to-be, Ziv Abud, was dead. The last time they had seen each other, they were hiding in a shelter with relatives and friends after attending the Nova festival.

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Hamas hands over six hostages but Israel delays release of 600 Palestinians

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Ceasefire in jeopardy as Israel says it will wait ‘until release of next hostages is guaranteed’

Hamas released six Israeli hostages on Saturday, but Israel delayed the handover of more than 600 Palestinians it was due to free from its prisons in exchange, putting the five-week-old ceasefire agreement once more in jeopardy.

The government said the release would be delayed “until the release of the next hostages is guaranteed, and without the degrading ceremonies” at handovers of Israeli captives in Gaza.

The statement by Benjamin Netanyahu’s office came as vehicles apparently carrying prisoners left the open gates of Ofer prison, only to turn around and go back in.

The release of 620 Palestinian prisoners had been delayed for several hours and was meant to occur just after six Israeli hostages were released on Saturday.

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NHS doctor who ‘glorified terrorist violence’ wins deportation challenge

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Home Office moved to cancel Menatalla Elwan’s leave to remain over posts on Hamas’s 7 October attack

An Egyptian NHS doctor who “glorified terrorist violence” by mocking Israeli civilians fleeing the Hamas attacks in October 2023 has won a legal challenge against deportation.

In one of three social media posts hours after the attacks began, Dr Menatalla Elwan, 34, who worked at an NHS trust in Liverpool, reposted footage of music festivalgoers running from Hamas terrorists and wrote “if it was your home, you would stay and fight”, accompanied by a smiling face emoji.

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Shiri Bibas remains identified as Israel and Hamas prepare for another hostage-prisoner swap

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Gaza ceasefire deal still on track amid uproar over fate of two Israeli boys and initial false return of their mother’s body

The body of the Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas has been identified, Israel’s army radio reported early on Saturday, adding that Bibas was likely killed in captivity with her children.

The confirmation came as Israelis and Palestinians braced for another tense exchange of hostages, prisoners and detainees on Saturday after uproar in Israel over allegations that two child hostages were “brutally murdered” by Hamas, and the group’s initial failure to deliver the body of their mother, instead returning the corpse of an unidentified woman.

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Long-term effects of Gaza war could quadruple Palestinian death toll, warn UK doctors

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Surgeons who worked in Gaza fear disease, malnutrition and eradication of healthcare will reverberate for decades

British doctors who worked in Gaza during the war have issued dire predictions over the long-term health of Palestinian civillians, warning that large numbers will continue to die.

The prevalence of infectious disease and multiple health problems linked to malnutrition, alongside the destruction of hospitals and killing of medical experts, meant mortality rates among Palestinians in Gaza would remain high after the cessation of Israeli shelling.

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BBC pulls Gaza documentary featuring child whose father was Hamas minister

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Show removed from iPlayer as ‘further due diligence’ carried out and critics ask if any Hamas members were paid for filming

A BBC documentary about Gaza has been pulled from its iPlayer service while the broadcaster deals with intensifying accusations that the film was biased because it failed to make clear the father of its child narrator was a Hamas deputy minister.

BBC sources indicated the intention was to make the documentary available to watch again once a “due diligence” exercise had taken place, but the decision reflects a frustration that the filmmakers did not inform the broadcaster of the situation before transmission.

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‘One of the hardest days’ in Israel as Hamas hands over hostages’ bodies

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Remains of two young children, an elderly man and an unidentified fourth person arrive in Tel Aviv after ‘cruel’ handover in Gaza

The remains of two young children and an elderly man who were taken hostage by Hamas, as well as a fourth person who remains unidentified, have been handed over to Israel in what onlookers described as one of the “hardest days” for Israelis since the Palestinian militant group attack that ignited the war in Gaza.

A convoy carrying what was thought to be the bodies of Shiri Bibas, 32, her sons Ariel and Kfir, four years and nine months old respectively, and 85-year-old Oded Lifshitz, all from the Nir Oz kibbutz, arrived at a forensics centre in Tel Aviv yesterday for DNA checks and autopsy procedures.

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Israeli hostage vowed to return to his family – only to find they had been killed

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Eli Sharabi learned his wife and daughters had been killed after his release from captivity in Gaza but is ‘mentally strong’, says British brother-in-law

“Don’t worry, I will be back. Whatever they do to me, I will be back,” was one of the last things Eli Sharabi told his wife and daughters before he was abducted by Hamas. And when the 52-year-old was freed after 16 months in captivity in Gaza, he was desperate to know if his family were waiting for him.

It was only then that he was told that his British wife, Lianne Sharabi, 48, and daughters Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, had been murdered at their home in the Be’eri kibbutz in Israel on 7 October 2023.

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Hamas offers handover of all hostages to Israel if next phase of ceasefire agreed

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Benjamin Netanyahu signals readiness for talks on second phase by appointing adviser Ron Dermer to lead delegation

Hamas has said it is ready to release all its remaining hostages in a single exchange if the ceasefire agreement with Israel moves forward to a second phase next month.

The offer came as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, signalled his readiness to talk about a second phase of the Gaza ceasefire after an extended delay, by appointing one of his closest advisers, Ron Dermer, a US-born cabinet minister and former ambassador to Washington, to lead the Israeli delegation to the talks.

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Hamas says it will hand over bodies of Bibas family and free six hostages

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Remains of Shiri Bibas and young sons Kfir and Ariel, whose deaths had not been confirmed, to be returned on Thursday

Hamas has said it will release six hostages from Gaza this week and hand over the bodies of four others, including the remains of two young children from the same family whose deaths had not previously been confirmed.

Khalil al-Hayya, a Hamas negotiator, said the four bodies to be handed over on Thursday would include those of 32-year-old Shiri Bibas and her sons, Kfir and Ariel, who were nine months old and four years old when Hamas abducted them from the Nir Oz kibbutz during the 7 October 2023 attack that ignited the Gaza war.

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Top judge ‘deeply troubled’ by PMQs exchange on Gaza asylum case

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Lady Carr says politicians should respect judicial independence, as Starmer calls decision to grant family asylum a ‘legal loophole’

England and Wales’s most senior judge has written to Keir Starmer about an “unacceptable” exchange with Kemi Badenoch at prime minister’s questions, saying she was “deeply troubled” by the discussion on a Palestinian family’s asylum case.

Lady Sue Carr, the lady chief justice, criticised the Conservative leader’s questions about the case, in which a family from Gaza had applied through a scheme designed for Ukrainian refugees.

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Campaigners urge F-35 fighter jet producing nations to stop supplying Israel

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Exclusive: More than 200 civil society groups say governments have failed to prevent planes from being used to violate international law

More than 200 organisations worldwide have called on nations involved in producing F-35 fighter jets to “immediately halt all arms transfers to Israel” amid fears they have failed to prevent the planes from being used to violate international law.

The letter, signed by 232 civil society organisations, was sent on Monday to government ministers in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the US and the UK as the war in Gaza reached 500 days.

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