Al-Shifa’s Mohammed Abu Salmiya alleges Israel tortured him across seven months of detention without charge
The head of the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital has accused Israel of torturing him and other detainees, following his release after seven months in Israeli prisons and detention facilities.
Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, was among dozens of Palestinians freed and returned to Gaza on Monday, according to Israeli authorities.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Use of tourist visas not fit for purpose, advocates say, as Gaza man describes how coming to Australia on one has left him with ‘no rights’
The number of Palestinians applying onshore for protection in Australia has ballooned, prompting calls from refugee advocates for the creation of an “emergency uplift” visa rather than people fleeing conflict relying on tourist visas to escape.
Home affairs department statistics for May revealed 119 people from the “Palestinian Authority” had applied for onshore protection visas, up from 66 in April, 110 in March, 88 in February and 33 in January.
Continue reading...Israel’s military says ‘large number’ of militants dead in Shujaiya area near Gaza City amid reports of bodies in streets
In an update to the earlier news about Israeli forces advancing further into Shujaiya, residents said Israeli tanks, which moved back into Shujaiya four days ago, fired shells towards several houses, leaving families trapped inside and unable to leave.
Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his position that there was no substitute for achieving victory in the war against Hamas.
Continue reading...Man-made crises in Gaza and Sudan leaving millions of people at risk, says retiring British diplomat Martin Griffiths
Sudan is facing horror “beyond imagination”, the outgoing UN aid chief has warned, with 750,000 people under imminent threat of famine and with conditions in danger of worsening even further.
The British diplomat Martin Griffiths will retire from his job as the UN’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs at a time when famine on a historic scale is looming over Sudan and Gaza.
Continue reading...Party spokesperson says WA senator ‘placed herself outside the privilege’ of participation in caucus after defiant TV interview
WA Labor senator Fatima Payman has been indefinitely suspended from the Labor party’s parliamentary caucus after she was summoned to a meeting with the prime minister at the Lodge on Sunday.
Payman’s previous one-week caucus suspension was upgraded after a Sunday morning television interview in which she vowed she was prepared to repeat her rebellion of last week and cross the floor in the Senate to support recognition of a Palestinian state.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our coverage on the Middle East here
Continue reading...Britain to make legal arguments over jurisdiction in case of alleged war crimes by the Israeli PM
An intervention by the UK government at the international criminal court is expected to delay a decision over whether an arrest warrant can be issued against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Judges at the ICC ruled on Thursday they would allow the UK to make legal arguments in the case as they consider whether to approve requests made by the ICC’s chief prosecutor for warrants against Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant.
Continue reading...University sought order after students slept in building for more than a month in response to report about LSE’s Gaza-linked investments
The London School of Economics has been granted a court order indefinitely barring encampments in one of its buildings after students slept in its atrium for more than a month in support of Palestine.
Several students set up the camp in the atrium of the ground floor of the Marshall Building in central London on 14 May, vowing to remain there until LSE met its demands.
Continue reading...Unrwa director says ‘stench in Gaza is enough to make you kind of immediately nauseous’. This live blog is closed
A ship’s captain reported that five missiles had landed close to his vessel in the Red Sea, 150 nautical miles (172 miles) northwest of the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) monitor said on Friday.
After posting earlier that it had received the report and that authorities were investigating (9.32am BST), the UKMTO said the ship had reported no damage and was heading northward. It gave no information on the ship or its cargo, reports Reuters.
Continue reading...Fifty left homeless in remote hamlet of mainly shepherds, as beatings and demolitions in occupied territory increase
Israeli soldiers have destroyed 11 homes and other structures in an isolated community in the occupied West Bank, leaving 50 people homeless, amid a reported uptick in house demolitions and spiralling violence in the Palestinian territory.
Contractors with bulldozers accompanied by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops arrived in Umm al-Kheir, a village mostly home to shepherds, on Wednesday morning and demolished six houses, tent residences, an electricity generator, solar cells and water tanks, according to residents and Israeli activists who documented the proceedings. Agricultural land and fences were also damaged and trees uprooted.
Continue reading...Nineteen minors, five with cancer, allowed to enter Israel before travelling to Egypt and elsewhere for treatment
A group of critically ill children have been allowed to leave Gaza, the first such medical evacuation since early May when Israel seized control of Rafah, the territory’s sole border crossing with the outside world.
Nineteen minors, including five who have cancer, were allowed to travel through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel on Thursday accompanied by relatives, and were to travel to Egypt and further abroad for medical treatment. The Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs said the evacuation was carried out in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) and officials from the US and Egypt.
Continue reading...Pro-Palestinian protesters accuse companies of trying to sell stolen land in the West Bank, and question legality
Efforts to market homes in Israel and stolen land in West Bank to Jewish Americans are continuing to spark protests across North America, with the latest angry confrontations happening outside a synagogue in one of Los Angeles’s most prominent Jewish neighborhoods.
The volatile protest and counter-protest outside a real estate event at the Adas Torah synagogue on Sunday prompted denunciations from Democratic politicians, including Joe Biden, who said protests targeting a house of worship were antisemitic and unacceptable.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Labor Friends of Palestine hit out at federal government’s stance as ‘weakening’ commitment to Palestinian statehood
Labor Friends of Palestine have praised Fatima Payman’s decision to cross the floor to support Palestinian statehood as “entirely consistent with Labor principles and policy” and rejected federal Labor’s stance as a “weakening” of its commitment on the issue.
After Anthony Albanese temporarily suspended the senator from caucus, the group wrote to Payman declaring that she had “the support of thousands of rank-and-file ALP members”.
Continue reading...Decision threatens Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government with collapse as Gaza conflict drags on
Israel’s supreme court has ruled that ultra-Orthodox Jewish men must be drafted into military service, a politically explosive decision that threatens the stability of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.
The unanimous ruling on Tuesday, from an expanded panel of nine judges, upheld an interim decision last month that the state had no authority to offer the current exemption for ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, men. It found that yeshivas – Orthodox seminaries for Torah study – should be ineligible for state subsidies unless students enlisted in the military.
Continue reading...Mayor Clover Moore says procurement and investment should be examined to potentially ‘put additional pressure towards a ceasefire’ in Gaza
The City of Sydney will consider tearing up contracts with suppliers targeted by the boycott Israel campaign, in a move the lord mayor, Clover Moore, hopes could “put additional pressure towards a ceasefire and an end to the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.
On Monday night, Moore backed a Greens motion for the council to prepare a report on the council’s investment policy regarding “companies involved in, or profiting from, any human rights violations including the illegal occupation of the settlements in Palestinian territories and the supply of weapons”.
Continue reading...Amid a loosening of Israel’s approach to targeting, a record number of media workers have been killed in Gaza
As Israel’s offensive in Gaza has become the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history, its military has repeatedly said it is not deliberately targeting the media.
“There is no policy of targeting media personnel,” a senior official said, attributing the record number of journalists killed to the scale and intensity of a bombardment in which so many of Gaza’s civilians have died.
Continue reading...Latest snapshot also finds half of households have had to sell or swap clothes for food, despite pressure on Israel to improve aid deliveries
More than half of households in Gaza have had to sell or swap their clothes to be able to buy food, the UN is to report, as a high risk of famine remains across the whole of the territory after a new round of violence in recent weeks.
The latest “Special Snapshot” of Gaza from the UN’s hunger monitoring system, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), that will be published on Tuesday also says that one in five of the population – more than 495,000 people – are now “facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity” involving “an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion”.
Continue reading...Bezalel Smotrich says he aims to establish sovereignty over occupied territory and thwart a Palestinian state
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has described in explicit terms his active effort to annex the West Bank to Israel, days after the Guardian revealed how the pro-settlement politician and his allies had quietly gained significant new legal powers to that end.
Speaking at a meeting of his Religious Zionism party, Smotrich told colleagues that he was “establish[ing] facts on the ground in order to make Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the occupied West Bank] an integral part of the state of Israel”.
Continue reading...Israeli PM says he hopes for diplomatic solution to conflict but will solve it in ‘a different way’ if necessary
Israel’s prime minister has said the most intense phase of the assault against Hamas in Gaza is coming to an end, freeing up forces to move to the Lebanese border, where escalating exchanges of fire with the militant group Hezbollah have increased fears of a wider war.
In his first public interview with a Hebrew-language network outlet in more than eight months of conflict, broadcast on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu also walked back on his commitment to a US-backed ceasefire proposal with Hamas, instead suggesting a more limited offer.
Continue reading...Military says conduct seen in video from occupied West Bank city of Jenin ‘does not conform’ to its values
The Israel Defense Forces have said they are investigating an incident in which soldiers strapped a wounded Palestinian man to the bonnet of a military vehicle during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday.
A video circulating on social media showed a man, variously identified as Mujahid Azmi or Fayyad, from the Jabriyat neighbourhood between the towns of Burqin and Jenin, tied to the front of an off-road vehicle that is seen passing two ambulances.
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