Group plans to hold demonstrations in London against UK arms sales to Israel every Tuesday and Saturday in April
About 40 Youth Demand protesters were told to move on by the police during a pro-Palestinian rally in central London on Saturday.
The campaigners began gathering at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on Saturday morning and made their way to King’s Cross station.
Continue reading...Israel says soldiers fired on ‘terrorists’ in ‘suspicious vehicles’ but footage shows clearly marked ambulances
Mobile phone footage of the last moments of some of the 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers killed by Israeli forces in an incident in Gaza last month appears to contradict the version of events put forward by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The almost seven-minute video, which the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Saturday was recovered from the phone of Rifat Radwan, one of the men killed, appears to have been filmed from inside a moving vehicle. It shows a red fire engine and clearly marked ambulances driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights.
Continue reading...Relatives who waited agonising week before bodies were found speak of passion that drove Red Crescent workers
Gaza is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a civilian now that Israeli forces have resumed their military campaign with even more ferocity, but for the first responders who rush towards the wreckage of bombed buildings, the risks are multiplied many times over.
The 15 paramedics and rescue workers whose bodies were found last weekend in a bulldozed pit outside Rafah knew they were putting their lives in peril to try to save others, but they could not have been prepared for what awaited them in the early hours of 23 March.
Continue reading...At least 25 killed in attack on Khan Younis in south as Israel says it is aiming to pressure Hamas into releasing hostages
Israel has restarted ground operations in the northern Gaza Strip and killed at least 25 people in airstrikes on the southern city of Khan Younis in what it says is a renewed military campaign aimed at pressuring Hamas into releasing Israeli hostages.
At least 25 people were killed in the attack on Khan Younis early on Friday, the local Nasser hospital told AFP, as the search for survivors continued.
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee from southern city of Rafah in one of war’s biggest mass displacements
An Israeli bombing of a school turned shelter in Gaza City has killed at least 27 people, rescuers said, and hundreds of thousands in the Rafah area are fleeing in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war amid Israel’s newly announced campaign to “divide up” the Gaza Strip.
Three missiles hit Dar al-Arqam school in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood on Thursday afternoon, the civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal said, killing several children and wounding 100 people.
Continue reading...Israeli PM, who is wanted by the court, hails Viktor Orbán’s ‘bold and principled’ decision to leave the ‘corrupt’ body
Hungary will leave the international criminal court because it has become “political”, the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said as he welcomed his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanhayu – the subject of an ICC arrest warrant – to Budapest for an official visit.
Standing beside Netanyahu at the start of the four-day visit, Orbàn said Hungary was convinced the “otherwise very important court” had “diminished into a political forum”.
Continue reading...Munther Abed, 27, was in the first ambulance on the scene of an airstrike near Rafah when Israeli soldiers opened fire
• Gaza paramedic killings: a visual timeline
A survivor from a massacre of Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers in Gaza has said he saw Israeli troops open fire on a succession of Red Crescent ambulances and rescue vehicles and then use a bulldozer to bury the wreckage in a pit.
Munther Abed, a 27-year-old Red Crescent volunteer, was in the back of the first ambulance to arrive on the scene of an airstrike in the Hashashin district of Rafah before dawn on 23 March, when it came under intense Israeli fire. His two Red Crescent colleagues sitting in the front were killed but he survived by throwing himself to the floor of the vehicle.
Continue reading...Israeli prime minister begins four-day trip after Hungarian counterpart says court ruling would ‘have no effect’
Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to begin a four-day official visit to Hungary on Thursday, marking the first time the Israeli prime minister has stepped foot on European soil since the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.
Hours after the ICC announced the warrants in November, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, made it clear he would defy the court to host Netanyahu, telling reporters that he would “guarantee” the ICC’s ruling would “have no effect in Hungary”.
Continue reading...Prime minister says Israel will build a new security corridor to isolate parts of the strip in major escalation
Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “seizing territory” and intends to “divide up” the Gaza Strip by building a new security corridor, amid a major expansion of aerial and ground operations in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“Tonight, we have shifted gears in the Gaza Strip. The [Israeli army] is seizing territory, hitting the terrorists and destroying the infrastructure,” the prime minister said in a video statement on Wednesday evening.
Continue reading...Defence minister Israel Katz says large areas of the territory would be seized and added to the security zones of Israel. Follow the latest developments
Israel’s announcement that the army will seize “large areas” of the Palestinian territory comes after a warning last week that the military would soon “operate with full force” in additional parts of Hamas-run Gaza.
Israel restarted intense bombing of Gaza on 18 March and then launched a new ground offensive, ending a nearly two-month ceasefire in the war with Hamas.
Continue reading...IDF says residents should evacuate Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Zayed, al-Manshiya and Tal al-Zaatar
At least 50,399 Palestinian people have been killed and 114,583 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
At least 42 bodies and 183 injured people have been received by hospitals in Gaza over the last day, according to the territory’s health ministry, which said that at least 1,042 Palestinian people have been killed by Israeli forces since Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas on 18 March.
Continue reading...Prime minister says military pressure is working, as he rejects claims that Israel is not serious about negotiations
Rejecting claims from Hamas and Israeli protesters that his government is not engaged in serious negotiations aimed at securing the release of those held captive in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he was committed to reaching an agreement to free the hostages and military pressure had been effective.
“We are willing,” Israel’s prime minister told a cabinet meeting. “We are negotiating under fire” and “can see cracks beginning to appear” in what Hamas has demanded in its negotiations, he said.
Continue reading...Militants release video of Israeli captive Elkana Bohbot pleading for freedom as they seek a 50-day halt to conflict
Hamas has allegedly agreed to free five living Israeli hostages in exchange for a 50-day ceasefire, as the militant group released a video of a hostage making an appeal for his freedom.
Hamas’s chief, Khalil al-Hayya, reportedly said on Saturday that the militant group expressed willingness to release the five hostages over the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, which begins on Sunday, after a proposal it received two days ago from Egypt and Qatar, Reuters has reported.
Continue reading...Body of team leader found almost a week after six rescuers went missing, Gaza’s civil defence agency says
Israel’s military admitted on Saturday it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles”, with Hamas condemning it as a “war crime” that killed at least one person.
The incident took place last Sunday in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in the southern city of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: Media workers in Gaza and the West Bank have faced relentless danger, and attacks on press freedom on the rise across the world
Good morning.
More than 170 journalists have been killed in Gaza since 2023, with some estimates putting the toll as high as 206. It is the deadliest conflict for media workers in recent history. In a sobering report, Thaslima Begum gathered some of their stories. And attacks on journalists worldwide are on the rise, with deaths occurring everywhere from the Middle East to Europe.
UK economy | Lower-income households are on track to become £500 a year poorer by the end of the decade as a result of the UK chancellor’s spring statement, according to analysis by the Resolution Foundation.
Monarchy | King Charles required hospital observation on Thursday after experiencing “temporary side-effects” as part of his medical treatment for cancer, Buckingham Palace said.
Canada | Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, has said the era of deep ties with the US “is over” as governments from Tokyo to Berlin and Paris sharply criticised Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with some threatening retaliatory action.
Asia-Pacific | Japan has for the first time released plans to evacuate more than 100,000 civilians from some of its remote islands near Taiwan in the event of conflict amid escalating tensions between Beijing and Taipei.
Environment | Supporters of the climate group Just Stop Oil have announced that after three years of disruptive protests they are ending their campaign of civil resistance. Hannah Hunt, whose speech on Valentine’s Day 2022 marked the beginning of the campaign, made the announcement outside Downing Street in London on Thursday.
Continue reading...Yuval Abraham criticised the Academy’s statement defending its silence after Israeli settlers attacked his co-director Hamdan Ballal
The Israeli director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land has condemned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its response to a violent attack on his Palestinian co-director Hamdan Ballal, who was beaten by Israeli settlers and detained by Israeli forces in the West Bank on Monday.
Earlier this week, Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham criticised the Academy for failing to publicly speak out in support of Ballal. Now he has criticised a statement issued by the Academy to its members on Wednesday, in which it appeared to defend its silence.
Continue reading...Opposition parties say political control of appointments will make judges subject to politicians and undermine democracy
Israel’s parliament has passed a law expanding elected officials’ power to appoint judges, in defiance of a years-long protest against Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to drive through judicial changes.
The approval of the bill, which opposition parties say will make judges subject to the will of politicians, comes as Netanyahu’s government is locked in a standoff with the supreme court over its attempts to dismiss the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara and Ronen Bar, the head of the internal security agency.
Continue reading...Israeli PM warns of seizure of territories and ‘other measures’ if Hamas refuses to release remaining hostages
Benjamin Netanyahu has repeated Israeli threats to seize territory in Gaza if Hamas refuses to release the remaining Israeli hostages, as, for the second consecutive day, hundreds of Palestinians joined protests against the militant group and demanding the end of the war.
The Israeli prime minister’s warning came a week after Israel resumed its military operation in the territory, shattering the relative calm of a January ceasefire with Hamas.
Continue reading...Hamdan Ballal says Israeli soldiers beat him with their rifle butts and threatened to kill him
The Oscar-winning Palestinian film director Hamdan Ballal has said that Israeli settlers who attacked him were aided by two Israeli soldiers, who beat him with the butt of their rifles outside his home and threatened to kill him.
In an interview with the Guardian, Ballal, one of the four directors of the film No Other Land, which documents the destruction of villages in the West Bank and won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards, recounted how on Monday two Israeli soldiers first encircled him while a settler was assaulting him, before violently striking him on the head and threatening to shoot him.
Continue reading...Director of No Other Land attacked by armed settlers in West Bank and handed to Israeli military, witnesses say
A Palestinian director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land has been arrested by the Israeli army after masked settlers attacked his house.
According to five Jewish American activists who witnessed the attack, Hamdan Ballal, one of the four directors of the the film that documented the destruction of villages in the West Bank, was surrounded and attacked by a group of about 15 armed settlers in Susya in the Masafer Yatta area south of Hebron.
Continue reading...