Category Archives: Israel-Gaza war

Why has Israel moved into Rafah and what is status of its ceasefire talks with Hamas?

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IDF sent tanks into city in southern Gaza on Tuesday as it said terms of ceasefire deal were undecided

On Monday, thousands left eastern neighbourhoods of Rafah in southern Gaza after the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) told people to move to a “humanitarian zone” north-west of the city to avoid being harmed in an imminent attack. Then Hamas, after a week of stalling, accepted terms for a ceasefire put forward by mediators. Hours later, Israel said it would participate in a new round of ceasefire talks but that the conditions of a deal were still far from decided. Finally, after airstrikes overnight, the IDF sent a column of tanks and other armoured vehicles to seize the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday.

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Thousands rally across Israel calling for Netanyahu to accept ceasefire deal

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Protesters march towards Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem with banner saying: ‘The blood is on your hands’

Thousands of Israelis around the country have joined rallies calling for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the terms of a ceasefire deal that Hamas accepted on Monday.

Protesters gathered near the defence headquarters in Tel Aviv, while in Jerusalem at least 100 protesters marched towards Netanyahu’s residence with a banner saying: “The blood is on your hands.”

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Dozens of anti-Israel protesters near Met Gala aim to disrupt event

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Dramatic conjunction of forces with aim to crash gala separated only by New York police and metal barricades

Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters came within a block of disrupting celebrity fashion’s biggest night out – the Met Gala – on Monday evening in a dramatic conjunction of forces that was separated only by New York police and metal barricades.

Some protesters, chanting “Rafah!, Gaza!”, said it was their intention to crash the gala. Others said they didn’t know about it. At times, a roughly equal number of police were guiding the winding protest through New York’s Upper East Side as they were preventing fashion fans from getting a glimpse of their favorite celebrities.

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Pro-Palestinian student protesters break through police fencing at MIT

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Students link arms around tents on campus and block local thoroughfare as they call for end to killings in Gaza

Pro-Palestinian protesters who had been blocked by police from accessing an encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday broke through fencing, linked arms and encircled tents that remained there, as Columbia University canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony following weeks of pro-Palestinian protests.

Sam Ihns, a graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said the group had been at the encampment for the past two weeks and that they were calling for an end to the killing of thousands of people in Gaza.

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Israel under huge pressure to accept three-stage ceasefire agreed by Hamas

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Benjamin Netanyahu faces chorus of diplomatic pressure not to go ahead with full-scale offensive on Rafah

Israel is coming under huge diplomatic pressure to accept a three-stage ceasefire surprisingly agreed by Hamas, despite the apparent determination of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to continue with a planned offensive in Rafah.

Netanyahu’s office said that the proposal Hamas accepted was “far from Israel’s essential demands” but that it would nonetheless send negotiators to continue talks on a deal.

At the same time, the Israeli military said it was conducting “targeted strikes” against Hamas in eastern Rafah.

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Israeli airstrikes on Rafah begin despite mounting ceasefire pressure

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Palestinians in Gaza thrown into confusion by Hamas’s acceptance of a deal, followed by Israel’s sceptical response and bomb attacks

Rafah’s fate hung in the balance on Monday after Hamas said it had accepted a ceasefire-for-hostage deal but Israel responded sceptically and said it would press on with its campaign on Gaza’s southernmost city, carrying out night airstrikes.

The more than 1 million Palestinians taking refuge in Rafah were thrown into confusion by the day’s events. Israel issued orders for the evacuation of part of the city earlier on Monday, triggering an exodus of thousands of people.

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Students stage pro-Palestine occupations at five more UK universities

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The protesters in encampments at Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Soas are demanding institutions end ties to Israel

Students at five UK universities have become the latest protesters to stage occupations to pressure their institutions into divesting funds from and ending partnerships with Israel.

Students set up encampments at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) and at Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool and Edinburgh universities. They are the latest in a global student uprising that is expected to build over the coming week across European campuses after starting at universities in the US, where hundreds of students and staff have been arrested for their involvement.

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Ghent students occupy university building in climate and Gaza protest

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More than 200 expected to join protest calling for climate action and to cut ties with Israeli institutions

More than 100 students have occupied Ghent University in the first European protest to fuse demands about Gaza and the climate crisis.

Ghent’s centrepiece UFO building was peacefully taken over by students calling for concrete action to meet the university’s 2030 climate plans, and asking the university to cut ties with institutions connected to the Israeli military.

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Middle East crisis: Hamas condemns Israeli order to evacuate Rafah as a ‘dangerous escalation’ – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. We have a separate live blog reporting the Hamas announcement that is has accepted a ceasefire proposal, which you can find here:

An anonymous Israeli official with knowledge of the ceasefire negotiations has told the New York Times that the two sides were close to a deal a couple of days ago but that comments by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Rafah pushed Hamas to harden its demands in a bid to protect the city from an Israeli ground invasion.

On Tuesday Netanyahu vowed that Israel would proceed with an offensive on the southern city even if renewed efforts at internationally brokered talks with Hamas result in the release of hostages and a ceasefire.

The idea that we will halt the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question. We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there – with or without a deal, in order to achieve total victory.

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Thousands of Palestinians evacuate eastern Rafah amid Israeli attack threat

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Overnight Israeli strikes increase numbers leaving southern city for ‘humanitarian zone’ on coast

Thousands of people have fled Rafah amid deep international concern that an Israeli military attack on Gaza’s southernmost city is imminent and a new, bloody phase in the conflict is beginning.

International leaders have scrambled to dissuade Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, from ordering a full-scale assault on the city, which aid agencies say would cause a new humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and lead to many civilian deaths.

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Israeli airstrike that killed seven health workers in Lebanon used US munition, analysis reveals

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Human rights experts say attack was violation of international law, and that US supplying of weapon defies 1997 Leahy law

Israel used a US weapon in a March airstrike which killed seven healthcare workers in southern Lebanon, according to a Guardian analysis of shrapnel found at the site of the attack, which was described by Human Rights Watch as a violation of international law.

Seven volunteer paramedics, aged between 18 and 25, were killed in the 27 March attack on an ambulance center belonging to the Lebanese Succor Association in the town of al-Habariyeh in south Lebanon on 27 March.

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Labour ‘working to get support back’ after losing votes over Gaza stance

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Analysis shows almost 18% drop in party’s vote in areas of England where more than a fifth are Muslim

A senior Labour official has insisted the party wants better lives for Palestinian people as it prepares to shift its campaigning to win back voters opposing its position on Gaza.

Pat McFadden, the party’s national election coordinator, said it would “work to get people’s support back” as analysis showed that despite huge gains in council seats, seizing the West Midlands mayoralty, and Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London, winning a third term, there was an almost 18% drop in the Labour vote in areas of England where more than a fifth of people identified as Muslim.

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Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices in ‘dark day for the media’

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Foreign Press Association decries move under new law based on claim network is a threat to national security

Israeli authorities shut down the local offices of Al Jazeera on Sunday, hours after a government vote to use new laws to close the satellite news network’s operations in the country.

Critics called the move, which comes as faltering indirect ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas continue, a “dark day for the media” and raised new concerns about the attitude to free speech of Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government.

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Gaza war surgeon feels ‘criminalised’ after being denied entry to France

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Prof Ghassan Abu-Sitta says Schengen-wide ban imposed by Germany appears to be attempt to silence witness testimony

A London surgeon who provided testimony on Israel’s war in Gaza after operating during the conflict has said he feels criminalised after being denied entry to France over the weekend.

Prof Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon was due to speak about the war to the French parliament’s upper house on Saturday. However, after arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris on a morning flight from London, he was informed by French authorities that Germany had enforced a Schengen-wide ban on his entry to Europe.

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Israel tells Hamas to accept ceasefire terms or risk new onslaught ‘in near future’

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Netanyahu refuses demands of permanent ceasefire and also moves to shut down Al Jazeera network

Senior Israeli officials ramped up pressure on Hamas on Sunday, saying Israel would refuse any permanent end to hostilities and threatening a new onslaught “in the very near future” if the militant organisation did not accept recently proposed terms for a ceasefire.

In a televised address, Benjamin Netanyahu once more rejected Hamas’s demands for a definitive end to the war in Gaza, saying that any permanent ceasefire would allow the group to remain in power and pose a continuing threat to Israel.

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Middle East crisis: Israel suspends broadcasts of Al Jazeera; minister threatens Rafah attack if truce talks undermined – as it happened

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Netanyahu cabinet votes to shut down TV network’s operations in Israel; Yoav Gallant says Hamas appear to not be serious about reaching a truce. This live blog is closed

A local official in southern Lebanon said an Israeli strike on a village on Sunday killed a couple and their child, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

“The dad, the mother and their little son were martyred”, according to the Mays al-Jabal municipality chief Abdelmoneim Chukair.

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‘There are people in tents writing dissertations’: UK reaches for scale of US campus protests

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Pro-Palestine protesters hope encampments at universities will contribute to an ‘international student revolt’

Students across Britain have said they hope pro-Palestine protests will reach the same scale as those seen on US campuses as they call for universities to divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.

Protests have spread across university campuses in Sheffield, Bristol and Leeds, after a crackdown in the US on protests, which led to mass arrests of students and staff.

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‘I was happy they still stand beside us’: Palestinians in Rafah on US campus protests

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Word of the demonstrations that have spread across the west has cheered some in Gaza’s southernmost city

In the tented camps and crowded streets of Rafah, the pro-Palestinian campus protests in the US have been followed closely.

“We hear a lot of news about students’ demonstrations in American universities … When I saw that, I was very happy that there are still those who stand beside us and in support of us,” said Nevin Abu Shahma, 39, who fled to Rafah from northern Gaza early in the war.

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Cop29 summit to call for peace between warring states, says host Azerbaijan

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Organisers of this year’s environmental conference hope cooperation on green issues could help ease global tensions

This year’s Cop29 UN climate summit will be the first “Cop of peace”, focusing on the prevention of future climate-fuelled conflicts and using international cooperation on green issues to help heal existing tensions, according to plans being drawn up by organisers.

Nations may be asked to observe a “Cop truce”, suspending hostilities for the fortnight-long duration of the conference, modelled on the Olympic truce, which is observed by most governments during the summer and winter Olympic Games.

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Student protesters interrupt University of Michigan commencement

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With some demonstrating in solidarity with Gaza and others with Israel, students waved flags and chanted slogans

Students demonstrating in solidarity with Gaza waved Palestinian flags and keffiyehs and chanted anti-war slogans during the University of Michigan’s commencement ceremony on Saturday.

Videos on social media showed students donning their graduation gowns as they appeared to chant: “Israel bombs, UMich pays!” and “How many kids have you killed today?” One photo showed a plane appearing to carry a sky banner over the university with the message: “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!”

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