‘From the river to the sea’: where does the slogan come from and what does it mean?

Andy McDonald was suspended from the Labour party for using the phrase, which some say advocates the eradication of Israel

“We won’t rest until we have justice, until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea can live in peaceful liberty,” said Andy McDonald, a Labour MP, at a protest in London organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign at the weekend.

Three days later, McDonald was suspended from the party pending an investigation, leaving the former shadow cabinet minister sitting as an independent for now.

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Israel targets Hamas tunnels amid hopes more aid will reach civilians in Gaza

IDF says it struck 300 targets this week and killed ‘numerous’ militants, including Hamas commander

Israeli tanks and infantry have targeted tunnel entrances and rocket launch positions in fresh clashes with Hamas around Gaza City and in the south of the enclave.

The fighting on Tuesday came amid renewed hope that significant quantities of aid would reach beleaguered Palestinian civilians in the south via the Rafah crossing with Egypt. A World Health Organization official in Geneva said on Tuesday that a “public health catastrophe” was imminent in Gaza.

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US House Republicans plan to give Israel $14.3bn by cutting IRS funds

One of the first policy actions under the new speaker Mike Johnson is a partisan bill despite Joe Biden’s request for $106bn in joint aid

Republicans in the US House of Representatives on Monday introduced a plan to provide $14.3bn in aid to Israel by cutting funding for the Internal Revenue Service, setting up a showdown with Democrats who control the Senate.

In one of the first major policy actions under new House speaker Mike Johnson, House Republicans unveiled a standalone supplemental spending bill only for Israel, despite Joe Biden’s request for a $106bn package that would include aid for Israel, Ukraine and border security.

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Entire population of Gaza becoming ‘dehumanised’ says UN commissioner

Philippe Lazzarini, who leads main UN agency in Palestine, says lives of millions depend on ceasefire

The entire population of Gaza is becoming “dehumanised”, the commissioner general for the main UN agency in Palestine has told the UN security council, saying a ceasefire has become a matter of life and death for millions.

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general for the UNRWA was one of three speakers to starkly describe the scale of the damage being inflicted on Gaza, as UN agencies piled pressure on the Security Council to set aside its divisions and back some form of immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

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Netanyahu declares it is ‘time for war’ as Israel hails hostage release

Prime minister rejects ceasefire calls, saying army’s advance in Gaza puts pressure on Hamas ‘monsters’

Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a ceasefire in Gaza, declaring “this is a time for war”, as he hailed the rescue of a hostage as evidence that Israel’s military offensive can free Israeli captives while delivering crushing blows to Hamas.

The Israeli prime minister congratulated the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and security agency Shin Bet for freeing Ori Megidish, an army private, but Israeli joy was tempered by a Hamas video of three other captives that remain in captivity.

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Russia blames Ukraine for antisemitic riot at airport in Dagestan

Foreign ministry says Kyiv played ‘direct and key role’ after mob stormed planes in search of Israeli passengers

Russia has blamed Ukraine for the antisemitic riot in the mostly Muslim region of Dagestan on Sunday in which an angry mob stormed the airport in Makhachkala in search of Jewish passengers arriving from Israel.

Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Monday that the riot was the result of a “provocation” orchestrated from outside Russia, with Ukraine playing a “direct and key role”.

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Hostage soldier rescued in Gaza, says Israel

Ori Megidish said to have been freed as Hamas issues video of three others still in captivity

Israeli forces have announced the liberation of a hostage in Gaza hours after Hamas released a video of three other hostages who remain in captivity.

Ori Megidish, an Israel Defence Forces soldier, was freed during an escalating offensive in Gaza, the IDF and the internal security agency Shin Bet said in a joint statement on Monday night. It said she had undergone medical checks and was doing well.

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Israel-Hamas war live: women and children make up nearly 70% of people reported killed in Gaza, says UN

UNRWA chief says ‘human tragedy unfolding under our watch is unbearable’; Netanyahu says ‘this is a time for war’ as he says no to ceasefire

Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has urged Israel to “listen” when its friends ask it to protect innocent lives in Gaza and warned that the world “will not accept continuing civilian deaths”.

Wong’s comments reflect a strengthening of the Labor government’s calls for Israel to minimise civilian deaths in Gaza. The foreign minister said civilians on both sides had been “murdered” in the “dreadful, tragic conflict”.

“It is a dreadful, tragic conflict. We are seeing loss of life. We are seeing civilians on both sides [who] have been murdered,” Wong told Radio National.

“We have seen civilians up on both sides in a lot of pain, and obviously, we still have Israeli hostages who have been taken, that Hamas is still holding.”

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Israeli forces appear to be advancing on Gaza City from two sides

Witnesses report Salah al-Din Road cut as Israel expands assault, in apparent effort to divide strip in two

Israeli tanks and infantry have advanced on Gaza City from two directions, with tanks reported to be on the main north-south road, in an apparent effort to cut the strip into two.

Reports in the Hebrew media, statements from Hamas and Palestinian witness accounts, described Israeli armour operating close to the Mediterranean coast in the north of Gaza in an area where Hamas said it was engaged in heavy fighting.

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‘Hamas has created additional demand’: Wall Street eyes big profits from war

Morgan Stanley and TD Bank hope for aerospace and weapons boon after a 7% value increase from start of Israel-Hamas conflict

The United Nations has warned that there was “clear evidence” that war crimes may have been committed in “the explosion of violence in Israel and Gaza”. Meanwhile, Wall Street is hoping for an explosion in profits.

During third-quarter earnings calls this month, analysts from Morgan Stanley and TD Bank took note of this potential profit-making escalation in conflict and asked unusually blunt questions about the financial benefit of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Co-published with Responsible Statecraft

Eli Clifton is a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and Investigative Journalist at Large at Responsible Statecraft

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Israeli forces advance in northern Gaza, as aid trickles in from the south

Reports of fierce clashes inside Gaza as the ‘second phase’ of the Israeli military’s war against Hamas continues

Israeli troops backed by tanks have expanded their operations inside Gaza amid reports of fierce air and and artillery strikes in the enclave’s north, as nearly three dozen trucks entered through the territory’s southern border on Sunday.

Hamas confirmed it was engaged in “heavy fighting” with Israeli troops inside northern Gaza on Sunday, as besieged residents were again warned by Israel to flee southward.

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Palestinian PM: we will not run Gaza without solution for West Bank

Exclusive: Mohammad Shtayyeh calls for a ‘comprehensive, peaceful vision’ and ceasefire in Gaza

The Palestinian Authority will not return to governing Gaza after the Israel-Hamas conflict without a comprehensive agreement that includes the West Bank in a Palestinian state, the authority’s prime minister has said.

Israeli civilian and military officials have said their plan for the end of the Gaza war is to have some form of transitional authority rule the territory, perhaps involving Arab states, leading to the restoration of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was ousted from Gaza in a 2007 Hamas coup.

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Further air and artillery strikes reported in northern Gaza – as it happened

This blog is closed.

The UN security council scheduled an emergency meeting on Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza on Monday afternoon at the request of the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council, according to a report by Associated Press.

Israeli airstrikes have hit areas around Gaza’s largest hospital, destroying roads leading to the facility, which is a major shelter for Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment, residents have told Associated Press.

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Palestinian civilians ‘didn’t deserve to die’ in Israeli strikes, US chief security adviser says

Jake Sullivan’s comments are a marked softening of the Biden administration’s hardline support of Israel

Thousands of Palestinians killed in Israel’s attacks on Gaza over the past three weeks “did not deserve to die”, according to the US national security adviser, in a marked softening of the Biden administration’s hardline support of Israel.

In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, Jake Sullivan, the White House’s chief security adviser, said Hamas is “hiding” behind civilians but that doesn’t lessen Israel’s “responsibility under international humanitarian law and the laws in war to do all in their power to protect the civilian population”.

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Prominent US figures face backlash and firings for pro-Palestinian statements

From magazine editors to Hollywood agents, supporters of Palestinians experiencing widespread rebuke

A rising number of prominent US figures have faced discipline over controversial public comments they have made about the Palestinian cause, as attacks by Israel on Gaza after the 7 October massacre of Israelis by Hamas fighters intensified.

David Velasco, the editor in chief of Artforum magazine, was reportedly fired after the magazine published an open letter in response to the war.

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Labour will not punish calls for Israel-Hamas ceasefire, shadow minister suggests

Keir Starmer has ‘listened’ to rebels and will ‘continue engaging’, says Peter Kyle, amid mounting pressure from senior party figures

Members of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet will not be punished if they break party ranks by demanding a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, because Labour is a “diverse party”, Peter Kyle has suggested.

The shadow science, innovation and technology minister also rejected claims that Labour was taking Muslim votes for granted, and said the party was not basing its policy on the conflict around what might win votes.

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Civil order ‘starting to break down’ in Gaza as people raid UN warehouses

Head of refugee agency says wheat, flour and hygiene supplies taken as Israel continues its bombardment

Order is beginning to collapse in the besieged Gaza Strip after thousands of desperate people raided UN warehouses in search of food, as the international criminal court’s top prosecutor said impeding relief supplies to the population may constitute a crime under the court’s jurisdiction.

Wheat, flour and hygiene supplies were taken from on Saturday from four UN-run centres across the blockaded 25- by 7-mile strip, home to more than 2 million trapped people, Thomas White, Gaza director for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said on Sunday.

A UN peacekeeper on the Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon was injured in cross-border fire, the world body said.

Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron “stressed the importance of getting urgent humanitarian support” into Gaza.

Jack Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said the US believed “there should be humanitarian pauses to get hostages out, potentially to get aid in”.

A delegation of families of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas urged President Isaac Herzog to keep their plight at the top of the political agenda.

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‘I don’t know if they are alive or dead’: father’s anxious wait in West Bank as Gaza is bombed

Mahmoud Abu Amir is among thousands of Palestinians frantically trying to locate their loved ones from afar

For Mahmoud Abu Amir, the war in his native Gaza began on Monday 9 October. An Israeli airstrike flattened a large area in the Jabalia refugee camp where he spent most of his life, demolishing the apartment block that was sheltering most of his family including his wife, Mayar, and their two young children.

Two days earlier, Hamas militants had stormed towns and kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip, killing 1,400 Israelis and taking at least 200 more hostage. When Abu Amir called his family that day to check on them, “it was a shock”, he said. “No one expected this to happen. But my wife, and my entire family were dead scared. They knew something would happen to them. They live near the border and they knew they would pay the price.”

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Does Biden’s unwavering support for Israel risk his chance for re-election?

Half of young Americans are skeptical of US support for Israel, and campus protesters demand a ceasefire in Gaza

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

On Wednesday night, Joe Biden basked in the pageantry of a state dinner – white-jacketed violinists, golden chandeliers dotted with pink roses, a vivid wall display of 3D paper flowers. But soon after toasting the Australian prime minister in a pavilion on the White House south lawn, the US president had to step away to be briefed on a deadly mass shooting in Maine.

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Peter Dutton accused of trying to gain ‘political advantage’ over Israel-Hamas war

Opposition leader says government ‘squibbed’ key United Nations vote, but trade minister says his comments are not ‘helpful at this time’

A senior Australian government minister has accused the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, of trying to gain “political advantage” over the “terrible, terrible conflict” in the Middle East.

Dutton said on Sunday that the government had “squibbed” a key vote at the United Nations, after Australia abstained from casting a vote in a UN resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza. He also said it was “very significant” that the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, had failed to secure a phone call with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, since the crisis began three weeks ago.

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