Plans to mount a major offensive there have drawn intense international opposition, including from the US. A video conference last week between US and Israeli officials to discuss a potential IDF ground operation in Rafah was reportedly marked by tensions and accusations as Washington expressed deep skepticism over Israeli plans to operate in the city.
The new announcement defies fierce international criticism of the planned ground operations. Over one million Palestinians — more than half of #Gaza 's population — have taken refuge in the city, which has been repeatedly bombed. Rafah is also the main logistical hub for aid into Gaza from Egypt.
"There are bombings almost every day, and the frequency is increasing every day," Fareed, 46, told DW via telephone from Rafah.
In the UK, Clinicians for #Gaza have published a letter expressing their outrage at the “ongoing slaughter” of Palestinian people in #Gaza and the occupied West Bank by #Israel
We are uncomfortable with the loud silence of our professional associations in response to these atrocities – in contrast to the principled and humane statements issued in response to Black Lives Matter and the invasion of Ukraine.
Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner has launched a defence of the Israeli drone strikes that killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, during an interview with 7.30 where he also said #Israel was looking into whether a criminal investigation needed to take place.
But the past six months of #Israel ’s military campaign has also brought “relentless death and destruction to Palestinians”, with over 32,000 reported killed, the vast majority women and children.
“Lives are shattered. Respect for international law is in tatters”, he said.
The resulting humanitarian disaster is unprecedented, with more than a million “facing catastrophic hunger.”
Human Rights Watch found no evidence of a military target in the vicinity of the building at the time of the #Israel attack, making the strike unlawfully indiscriminate under the laws of war. Israeli authorities have provided no justification for the attack. The Israeli military’s long track record of failing to credibly investigate alleged war crimes underscores the importance of the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s inquiry...
The #WCK named all seven aid workers who were killed by the #Israel strike, this evening
WorCK's chief executive Erin Gore said the team of aid workers was "travelling in a deconflicted zone in two armoured cars branded with the #WorldCentralKitchen logo and a soft skin vehicle" when it was hit. This is not only an attack against WCK , this is an attack on humanitarian organisations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war
#WCK founder José Andrés said on social media he was “heartbroken and grieving” after losing “several of our sister and brothers in an #Israel Defense Forces strike in #Gaza .”
“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing,” Andrés said. “It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.”
The strike killed a U.S.-Canadian dual national, at least one Palestinian worker and individuals from Australia, Poland and the United Kingdom, according to the group, and has been widely condemned internationally.
World Central Kitchen CEO Erin Gore described the strike on the convoy as a “targeted attack” by the #Israel Defense Forces and “unforgivable.”
Alicia Kearns, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, has claimed government lawyers have told the UK that #Israel is not complying with its international commitments, but has not disclosed this and continues arms exports.
Thousands of Arab Israelis rallied Friday for an end to the #Gaza war as they marked Land Day, an annual commemoration of a deadly 1976 crackdown on protests against plans to seize land owned by Arab citizens.
In March 1976, the Israeli government decided to expropriate 20,000 dunams (4,940 acres) of land in the Galilee, a third of which was owned by Arab Israelis, to build Jewish towns.
Around 200,000 people joined a march for #Palestine in London on Saturday.
While smaller than some of the biggest marches, it was still huge. It was bigger than the one on 9 December or 14 October, for example—and showed it was right to take to the streets despite Ramadan and Easter.
And sizeable demonstrations took place at the same time in other parts of Britain, including 1,000 people in Leeds, 300 in Cardiff and 400 in Halifax.
The forced movement of much of #Gaza ’s population from the north of the territory to shelters and tent cities in the south—twinned with the policy of restricting relief to all of Gaza—has made famine practically inevitable. Any plausible assessment of the consequences of these policies would have to constitute a calculation that the population would face the type of risks it now confronts.
#Israel ’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, announced the seizure of 10 square kilometers (3.8 square miles) of Palestinian territory in the West Bank on Friday. The move marks the single largest land seizure by the Israeli government since the 1993 Oslo accords, according to Peace Now, a settlement watchdog group.
Friday’s land order is particularly problematic for the prospect of a two-state solution, experts say.
Should #Israel continue the fighting and thus impede aid operations, should it continue to restrict those operations in any way, it will be seen as the primary author of one of the greatest humanitarian crises we have seen in modern memory.
The healthcare system in Gaza has essentially collapsed, Western doctors who visited the Palestinian enclave in recent months told an event at the United Nations on Monday, speaking of “appalling atrocities” from Israel’s offensive.
International experts have warned that Israel’s assault constitutes a genocide, accusations that the World Court is probing.
UN officials have blamed Israel for the growing crisis telling The Independent that famine in Gaza is “manmade” and due to Israel’s restrictions on delivery of supplies. On Tuesday the UN’s human rights chief Volker Turk went a step further saying Israel’s actions may amount to using starvation as a weapon of war, which is a war crime.
"We believe that a two-state solution must be imposed from outside to bring peace. Although, I insist, #Israel is reaffirming its refusal (of this solution), and to prevent it they have gone so far as to create Hamas themselves," Borrell said. "Hamas has been financed by the Israeli government to try to weaken the Palestinian Authority of Fatah.
Caring for the remaining patients are 15 health care workers, with no tap water, little food and oxygen, few medical supplies and no electricity except a backup generator that maintains some lifesaving equipment, the W.H.O. said. The W.H.O.’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Sunday that Nasser was no longer functional.
But the second case at The Hague adds to the legal scrutiny of the Jewish state’s actions over decades of conflict with the Palestinians.
The hearing that began on Monday stems from a request by the UN General Assembly in 2022 that the ICJ take a position on “the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”.
The United States has declared that #Israel should not proceed with its planned offensive into Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and has proposed a draft UN resolution calling for a temporary ceasefire — a sign of further tensions between the two allies over the conduct of the war against Hamas.
An Israeli raid last week has reduced one of Gaza’s biggest hospitals to little more than a shelter for a small, terrified crew of patients and medical staff, while health officials warned on Monday that food and fuel supplies were almost gone at another hospital that has endured a nearly monthlong siege in the same city, Khan Younis.
Brazil’s president initially condemned the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack but has since been critical of Israel’s response.
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments,” Mr. Lula told reporters during the 37th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. But, he then added, “it did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
Leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the country’s oldest and most prominent Black Christian denominations, called this week for the United States to end its financial aid to Israel, saying the months long military campaign in Gaza amounted to “mass genocide.”...
“After this torture, they plan to murder them. The United States of America will have likely paid for the weapons they use. This must not be allowed to happen.”
