Category Archives: Israel

Middle East crisis: Netanyahu says preparations for ground assault on Rafah will ‘take some time’ – as it happened

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Israeli prime minister reiterates his intention to launch a ground offensive but cautions over timing

Unicef has published a video during which spokesperson James Elder has visited what remains of the Nasser hospital medical complex in Gaza after five months of Israeli bombardment and the ground offensive there.

Visibly emotional, during the video Elder says:

The last time I was in this hospital there were thousands of people taking shelter there. I mean, look at this place. Sorry, I need a minute.

Medical staff would do 36 hour shifts. These incredible people, running, giving incredible care, to every single child with the wounds of war who needed it. Extraordinary medical staff.

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Netanyahu ‘determined’ to carry out Rafah assault despite pleas from Biden

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Israel’s PM says he does not see an alternative to a ground attack on Gaza’s southern city, in a sign of widening disagreement with the US president

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he remains determined to carry out a ground invasion of Gaza’s southern city of Rafah – where many displaced Palestinians are sheltering – despite the misgivings of US president Joe Biden.

Netanyahu told lawmakers on Tuesday he had made it “supremely clear” to the US president “that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah, and there’s no way to do that except by going in on the ground”.

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Canada to halt arms sales to Israel after non-binding vote in house of commons

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Parliamentary motion from New Democratic party passed with support of Liberals, Bloc Québécois and Green party

Canada will halt future arms sales to Israel following a non-binding vote in the house of commons. The foreign affairs minister, Mélanie Joly, told the Toronto Star her government would halt future arms shipments. “It is a real thing,” she said on Tuesday.

The decision follows a parliamentary motion, introduced by the New Democratic party (NDP), that called on the governing Liberals to halt future arms exports to Israel. The New Democrats, who are supporting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority government, have expressed frustration with what they see as his failure to do enough to protect civilians in Gaza.

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UN says Israeli restrictions on Gaza food aid may constitute a war crime

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High commissioner for human rights describes crisis as human-made as hunger levels worsen

Israeli restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza may amount to the war crime of deliberate starvation, the UN has said, as the White House called for unimpeded access for aid to the coastal strip.

Amid mounting and catastrophic hunger in parts of Gaza, and official UN figures for hunger levels which are the worst seen under the current classification system, the Biden administration added it was “deeply concerned” following a report about potential famine.

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Documents reveal alleged pattern of Israeli harassment of Unrwa workers on West Bank

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Exclusive: UN documents seen by the Guardian list hundreds of incidents, including claims workers were blindfolded and beaten

UN staff working with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been subjected to a systematic campaign of obstruction and harassment by the Israeli military and authorities since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza five months ago, according to internal UN documents obtained by the Guardian.

The documents record hundreds of incidents ranging from the alleged blindfolding and beating of UN staff at checkpoints to the use of UN facilities by Israeli troops as firing positions during raids on refugee camps in which Palestinians were killed.

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Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable’

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Donald Trump’s son-in-law also says Israel should bulldoze an area of the Negev desert and move Palestinians there

Jared Kushner has praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip.

The former property dealer, married to Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, made the comments in an interview at Harvard University on 8 March.

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Middle East crisis: no way to eliminate Hamas in Rafah without ground offensive, says Netanyahu – as it happened

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Israeli prime minister reiterates that he plans to order a ground offensive in the southern Gaza Strip where a huge number of displaced Palestinians are living

At least 31,819 Palestinians have been killed and 73,934 injured since 7 October in Israel’s military offensive on the Gaza Strip, the territory’s health ministry said on Tuesday.

About 93 Palestinians were killed and 142 injured in the past 24 hours, the Hamas-led ministry added.

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Israeli delegation to visit Washington to discuss planned offensive on Rafah

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US says attack would be ‘mistake’ as Biden and Netanyahu talk by phone for first time in over a month

Israel will send a team of officials to Washington to discuss its planned offensive on Rafah, the White House has said, as the Biden administration insists that an attack would be a “mistake” and seeks to persuade Israel to allow in more aid in the face of an imminent famine in Gaza.

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, announced the Israeli visit after a phone call on Monday between Joe Biden and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, focusing on the planned Rafah assault that Netanyahu has vowed to launch.

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Fierce clashes between IDF and Hamas after Israel takes control of key hospital

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Israel claims to have killed 20 militants at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City following early morning raid

Fierce fighting has continued around al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, as Israeli troops battled Hamas militants after seizing control of the strategically situated medical complex in an early morning raid.

Witnesses reported multiple airstrikes and ferocious firefights as fears rose for the safety of hundreds of civilians in the immediate vicinity of the hospital.

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‘Catastrophic levels of hunger’ in Gaza mean famine is imminent, says aid coalition

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More than a million people are at risk, according to report, as Oxfam says Israeli authorities are blocking relief deliveries

Famine is imminent in northern Gaza with people suffering “catastrophic levels of hunger”, a coalition of aid groups has warned.

The situation was called “man-made starvation”, as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a group that includes the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization, said that 1.1 million people, half of Gaza’s population, faced famine.

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Middle East crisis: famine ‘imminent’ in northern Gaza, UN report says, as EU foreign policy chief calls area ‘open air graveyard’ – as it happened

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Israel using starvation as weapon of war, says Josep Borrell, as UN report warns 1.1 million face ‘catastrophic’ food supply conditions. This live blog is closed

Oxfam has accused Israel of controlling “an unpredictable and chaotic regime of approval, scanning and inspection” of humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip.

In a new report, the NGO says “people living in Gaza will suffer mass death from disease and starvation far beyond the current 31,000 Palestinian war casualties unless Israel takes immediate steps to end its violations.”

The ICJ order should have shocked Israeli leaders to change course, but since then conditions in Gaza have actually worsened. The fact that other governments have not challenged Israel hard enough, but instead turned to less effective methods like airdrops and maritime corridors is a huge red flag, signalling that Israel continues to deny the full potential of better ways to deliver more aid.

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Israel tells civilians to evacuate after taking control of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City

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Casualties reported after raids on complex, where hundreds are reportedly sheltering and IDF claims is being used by Hamas

Israeli forces are in control of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, after an overnight raid on the medical complex, and have told thousands living nearby to evacuate towards the south of the Palestinian territory.

Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, said early on Monday that troops were “conducting a high-precision operation in limited areas of Shifa hospital based on … intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists to command attacks”.

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Netanyahu vows to press ahead with assault on Rafah

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PM acknowledges international pressure is increasing but says it will not stop Israel achieving its goals

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with sending Israeli troops into Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, rejecting deep international concerns over the risks to more than a million Palestinians who have sought shelter there.

The prime minister said no amount of international pressure would stop Israel from realising all of its war aims.

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Middle East crisis: Palestinian foreign ministry accuses Israeli government of ‘blind revenge’ – as it happened

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Comments come after Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Israeli military would go ahead with plans for operations in Rafah

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said Israeli forces released Tamer Fouad Salim Al-Qarm, a PRCS volunteer, yesterday after a “36-day detention during the occupation’s raid on al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis”.

The PRCS added in its post on X that Israeli troops continue to detain 13 PRCS members and volunteers, “whose fate remains unknown to this moment”.

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Gaza ceasefire hopes rise after Hamas abandons key demands

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Israeli negotiators are heading to Qatar after the group dropped calls for a permanent end to hostilities and agreed a 40-day pause

Israeli negotiators are expected to arrive in Qatar on Sunday amid intense new efforts to bring the war in Gaza to at least a temporary halt, after Hamas abandoned key ceasefire demands last week following a series of setbacks.

In recent days, the militant organisation has been disappointed by the failure of its calls for a wave of protest during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, angered by the appointment without consultation of a new prime minister by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and suffered the possible death of a key military commander in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

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Middle East crisis: ceasefire talks ‘expected to resume on Sunday’ – as it happened

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Source tells Reuters that discussions would cover issues including prisoner-hostage exchanges and humanitarian aid

Record numbers of Palestinian detainees are filling Israeli prisons where they face “systemic abuse” and torture, rights advocates warned, calling for international action, reports AFP.

Members of several Israeli NGOs travelled to Geneva this week to raise concerns before the UN about a major “crisis” inside the country’s prisons.

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Top senator calls on Biden to ‘use all levers’ to pressure Israel over Gaza

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Democrat Chris Van Hollen says Biden must cease giving arms to Israel until it lifts restrictions on aid and does more to protect lives

Joe Biden should use his leverage and the law to pressure Israel to change how it is prosecuting the war in Gaza, the Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen said.

Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, is among a group of senators urging Biden to stop providing Israel with offensive weapons until it lifts restrictions on the delivery of food and medicine into Gaza, where children are now dying of hunger and famine looms.

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‘Everyone has friends in jail’: how Palestinian prisoners became central to Gaza ceasefire talks

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Hamas seeks scaled-back release it can portray as victory as Israeli government weighs conflicting pressures over hostages

In a cafe on a dusty roundabout in the small West Bank town of Silwad, men sit and play cards, one eye on the large TV screen showing the latest news from Gaza. When there is any mention of a possible ceasefire deal – and so the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails – there is silence.

“Nobody tell us anything officially. We see on the news about a deal. So we just know that my brother might be released,” said Akhram Hammad, a 45-year-old blacksmith whose sibling Tayyer is serving multiple life sentences for shooting dead seven Israeli soldiers and three civilians at a checkpoint not far from Silwad in 2002. “It would be really good and everybody would be really happy; otherwise, he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.”

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Authors withdraw from PEN America festival in protest over Israel-Gaza war

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Group of more than a dozen writers decry organization’s inadequate response to ‘genocide’ being committed by Israel

More than a dozen prominent authors and literary figures have withdrawn from PEN America’s flagship World Voices Festival in protest of what they see as an inadequate response by the organization to the “genocide” being committed against Palestinians by Israel in Gaza.

The group of writers, which includes Naomi Klein, Michelle Alexander, Hisham Matar, Isabella Hammad and Zaina Arafat, sent a letter to PEN America asserting it had “betrayed the organization’s professed commitment to peace and equality for all, and to freedom and security for writers everywhere” by failing to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war.

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Biden says Schumer made ‘good speech’ in breaking with Benjamin Netanyahu

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President also condemns US surge in Islamophobia in comments that could portend broader shift in sentiment towards Gaza war

Joe Biden on Friday said Senator Chuck Schumer made “a good speech” that reflected many Americans’ concerns when he publicly broke with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over his handling of the war in Gaza.

While the US president announced no changes in his administration’s policy towards Israel, his views on the speech Schumer made Thursday from the floor of the US Senate, where the New York Democrat is the majority leader, could portend a broader shift in sentiment.

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