‘Absolute chaos’: first Briton to cross from Gaza to Egypt describes ordeal

Abdel Hammad took 10 hours to get to Egypt and will not receive support from UK Foreign Office to fly home

A British surgeon who was stranded in Gaza has described scenes of “absolute chaos” at the Rafah crossing after becoming one of the first UK nationals to cross into Egypt.

Abdel Hammad, 67, a transplant surgeon from Liverpool working for a charity in Gaza, told his son Salim Hammad that he was stuck on a bus for five hours with 54 others as he waited to be given the go-ahead to cross into Egypt.

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WHO says ‘almost impossible’ to bring aid into Gaza – as it happened

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Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister and army chief, has spoken to Foreign Policy magazine, saying Israel will “probably lose the support of public opinion” over its response to the 7 October Hamas attack.

In a transcript of the interview published on the publication’s website, the former prime minister said, “our objective is to limit the military and government capabilities of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This could not be accomplished by airstrikes alone. We have to deploy probably many thousands of boots on the ground.”

Even if it develops into a full-scale regional conflict with Hezbollah, which has 10 times more rockets and missiles, or if the West Bank or Golan Heights are involved, Israel is still stronger. It’s not an existential threat, but it will take more time, more losses, and more friction with our supporters in the world.”

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Thursday briefing: The Labour councillors quitting over Keir Starmer’s Israel-Hamas ceasefire stance

In today’s newsletter: More than 30 councillors have resigned from the party in protest against Starmer’s position – here’s why, in their own words

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Good morning. Today, we’re going to Bradford to meet city councillor and bus driver Taj Salam. He is one more than 30 Labour councillors who have resigned from the party in anger at Sir Keir Starmer’s refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

They are part of a growing rebellion within the party over Starmer’s refusal to publicly advocate for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. Instead, he has called for “humanitarian pauses” to allow the “urgent alleviation of Palestinian suffering”.

Israel-Hamas war | Joe Biden has said there should be a “pause” in the fighting in Gaza to enable the release of hostages, as Hamas said nearly 200 people had been killed in two days of Israeli airstrikes on the enclave’s Jabalia refugee camp.

AI | The UK, US, EU and China have all agreed that artificial intelligence poses a potentially catastrophic risk to humanity, in the first international declaration to deal with the fast-emerging technology.

UK news | Northumbria police have said that two more people have been arrested over the deliberate felling of the Sycamore Gap tree in Northumberland.

Media | Noel Clarke’s legal action against the Guardian has suffered a setback after a high court judge rejected his lawyers’ arguments on the meaning of eight articles that he says unfairly defamed him.

Covid-19 | The pandemic has caused sustained harm to the brain health of people aged 50 or over, rapidly speeding up cognitive decline regardless of whether or not they caught Covid, researchers have discovered.

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Biden urges pause in Gaza fighting as Hamas says refugee camp death toll nearing 200

US president says pause will allow time to rescue hostages, amid fresh Israeli airstrikes on enclave’s Jabalia refugee camp

Joe Biden has said there should be a “pause” in the fighting in Gaza to enable the release of hostages, as Hamas said nearly 200 people had been killed in two days of Israeli airstrikes on the enclave’s Jabalia refugee camp.

The US president was speaking at a campaign fundraiser in Minneapolis on Wednesday when a woman shouted: “Mr President, if you care about Jewish people, as a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire.”

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Australia’s new UN counter-terror chief fears world repeating ‘same mistakes’ of the past in Israel-Gaza conflict

Prof Ben Saul cautions that exceeding the limits of international law only breeds extremism and discontent, and is no recipe for peace

As he takes office as the UN’s sole special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism this week, Prof Ben Saul’s purview is dominated by what he views as one serious, though not unprecedented, “mistake”: countering terrorism with military might.

“Unfortunately, when 9/11 came, the same kind of pressure to take the gloves off became manifest pretty quickly,” says the incoming monitor and Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney, as he reflects upon Israel’s siege of Gaza in response to Hamas’s attacks on 7 October.

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Adelaide family of four among 20 Australians to flee Gaza via Egypt border

Adelaide family who escaped besieged enclave through Rafah as part of multinational deal say crossing border was ‘nerve-wracking’ and took several attempts

An Adelaide family of four who had been trapped in Gaza for three weeks are among 20 Australians who have managed to escape the besieged enclave into Egypt.

Australia has confirmed 20 Australian nationals – and three other people who had registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat) – crossed through the Rafah pass into Egypt as part of a multinational deal to allow foreign national civilians to leave Gaza.

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Palestinian Americans sue state department on behalf of relatives stuck in Gaza

Americans were provided flights from Israel after the 7 October Hamas attacks, but those in besieged Gaza Strip cannot leave

American citizens trapped in the Gaza Strip and their families in the US are lawyering up after weeks of desperate and futile attempts to exit the war zone, which has been under heavy bombardment by Israel since Hamas’s attacks on 7 October.

Nearly a dozen lawsuits have been filed or are set to be filed against the US state department, according to the Arab American Civil Rights League.

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First UK nationals leave Gaza via Rafah crossing, says Foreign Office

Relatives of the 200 British or dual nationals trying to leave describe scenes of chaos and desperation

The families of British citizens trapped in Gaza have said it is devastating that their loved ones have been turned away from the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, as the Foreign Office said the first UK nationals had made it through.

Hundreds of foreign passport holders and injured Palestinians requiring hospital treatment crossed into Egypt on Wednesday after more than three weeks of conflict in which thousands of people have been killed.

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UN official who denounced Gaza ‘genocide’ had been under review after Israel lobby complaint

Exclusive: Craig Mokhiber, retiring UN official who criticised the body over its failure to protect civilians in Gaza, had been accused of bias in his social media

A senior UN official who sent a letter denouncing the organisation’s failure to protect civilians in Gaza had been subject to a review into allegedly biased social media posts after a pro-Israel lobby group complained.

Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, wrote on 28 October to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Türk, accusing Israel of committing genocide and his employer of failing to stop it. “This will be my last communication to you,” he said. He has since stepped down.

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Fifteen Israeli soldiers killed as fighting intensifies in Gaza

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu vows to press on with ground offensive despite rising death toll

Fifteen Israeli soldiers were killed amid fierce fighting in Gaza in a series of incidents that have underlined the mounting challenges facing the Israel Defence Forces in their attempts to push further into built-up areas of Gaza.

The heaviest loss of life occurred when a “Namer” armoured personnel carrier was hit at about noon on Tuesday by an anti-tank guided missile, killing 11 soldiers and wounding several more.

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US should place ‘no limit’ on civilian casualties Israel inflicts, senator says

However, Republican senator Lindsey Graham says, Israel should be ‘smart’ and try to limit casualties ‘the best they can’

The US should place “no limit” to civilian casualties Israel might inflict in Gaza in response to the Hamas terror attacks of 7 October, a senior Republican senator said.

Speaking to CNN, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was asked: “Is there a threshold for you, and do you think there should be one for the United States government, in which the US would say, ‘Let’s hold off for a second in terms of civilian casualties?’”

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Hamas says 195 killed in two days of strikes on Jabalia camp – as it happened

Hamas says hundreds injured after refugee camp strikes; the US president responded to an anti-war protestor saying he supports a humanitarian ‘pause’

Iranian leaders have warned the world is closer to a regional war in the Middle East and that Israel has crossed red lines, which, in the words of President Ebrahim Raisi, “may force everyone to take action”.

But Iran is walking a tightrope, keen to avoid a direct confrontation and therefore blurring its red lines to avoid walking into a trap. Instead, it leans on proxy militias around the region from its “axis of resistance” to launch limited strikes aimed at Israel and US military bases in Iraq and Syria.

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Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt opens for limited evacuation

Crossing open for first time in weeks to allow evacuation of foreign passport holders and injured Palestinians

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has opened for the first time in more than three weeks of brutal conflict to allow the evacuation of dozens of injured Palestinians requiring hospital treatment and hundreds of foreign passport holders.

Witnesses at the border on the Gaza side saw scores of people and cars hurrying to get through the gates towards the Egyptian side through the damaged terminal area, some carrying their belongings. Ambulances whisked away the wounded to Egyptian field hospitals, including one young boy with heavy bandaging around his stomach.

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South American countries recall ambassadors and cut ties with Israel over war with Hamas

Bolivia’s leftwing government cuts diplomatic ties with Israel, alleging crimes and human rights abuses in Gaza, as Chile and Colombia recall ambassadors

A number of South American countries have registered diplomatic protests against Israel, in response to its latest conflict with Hamas, with Bolivia’s leftwing government cutting ties entirely and attributing its decision to alleged war crimes and human rights abuses being committed in the Gaza Strip.

The decision by Bolivia was announced at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon by María Nela Prada, a minister in President Luis Arce’s administration. “We demand an end to the attacks on the Gaza Strip which have so far claimed thousands of civilian lives and caused the forced displacement of Palestinians,” the minister told reporters in her country’s de facto capital, La Paz.

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Dozens killed after Israeli airstrikes on Gaza refugee camp

Israeli military says it bombed Jabalia camp to target a key Hamas commander, Ibrahim Biari

Israeli airstrikes have destroyed apartment blocks and killed dozens of people at a refugee camp in northern Gaza on the 25th day of a conflict that the United Nations said has become a “graveyard” for children.

At least six airstrikes hit residential areas in the Jabalia refugee camp on Gaza City’s outskirts on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people and injuring about 150 people, Hamas officials said.

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What are Israel’s aims in launching Gaza ground invasion?

Limited information suggests IDF seeking to encircle Gaza City – but urban warfare can confer significant advantages to defenders

Israel’s ground invasion of the northern Gaza Strip began on Friday evening, an urban warfare operation that is likely to be lengthy, fraught with danger for its military and Palestinian civilians and whose ultimate goals remain uncertain.

It began more than three weeks after Hamas’s surprising and brutal cross-border attack of 7 October, in which 1,400 Israelis were killed, and comes amid what the monitoring group Airwars says is an aerial bombardment that “far outpaces” the number of bombs dropped in “the deadliest months” of the US-led war against Islamic State.

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Dominic Cummings tells Covid inquiry foul-mouthed messages about colleague weren’t misogynistic – UK politics live

Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser denies contributing to an atmosphere of misogyny at No 10, saying he was ‘much ruder about men’

Heather Hallett, the chair, intervenes at this point. She asks Cain if he is defending the 10-day gap. She says she finds that curious if he is.

Cain says locking down the country is a huge, huge undertaking. In government terms, that is government acting at speed. But it was “longer than you would hope”, he says.

Do I understand from what you said earlier that you would defend the 10-day gap between the decision taken that there had to be a national lockdown and actually implementing that decision? Because I find that curious.

As I said, I think it is longer than you would like, but I think it’s important just to emphasise the amount of things that had to be done and the amount of people we had to take with us to deliver a nationwide lockdown.

It’s a huge, huge undertaking and to be honest, from my understanding of government, that is government moving at a tremendous speed – which maybe says more about government than other things.

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Colombia recalls ambassador to Israel – as it happened

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The United Nations has said “there is already clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed” by Hamas and the Israeli military since 7 October and that it is gathering evidence for potential prosecutions.

All parties involved in the conflict are governed by a body of law drawn from a system of conventions, treaties and war crimes tribunal rulings known as “international humanitarian law” or the “law of armed conflict”.

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Keir Starmer cautions Israel but refuses to back calls for ceasefire

Labour leader criticises Israeli bombardment but says ceasefire is not ‘the correct position now’

Keir Starmer has urged Israel to obey international law but refused to back calls for a ceasefire, as he seeks to heal increasingly bitter divisions within his own party over the conflict in Gaza.

The Labour leader spelled out his position on the crisis in detail on Tuesday after days of criticism from many of his own members and MPs that he appeared oblivious to the suffering of Palestinians.

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Arab American backing for Biden sinks over ‘rock-solid’ Israel support

Poll from AAI shows increase in discrimination against Arab Americans and increase in support for Donald Trump

Arab American support for Joe Biden has fallen in the wake of his response to the latest bout of violence between Israel and Hamas, a new poll from the Arab American Institute (AAI) shows. The same poll showed a sharp increase in reports of discrimination against members of the community.

Following Hamas’s deadly 7 October attacks, which killed 1,400 Israelis, Biden has repeatedly proclaimed the US’s “rock-solid and unwavering support” for Israel, which has responded by tightening its blockade and bombarding the Gaza Strip. More than 8,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to health officials in the coastal territory.

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