Closing summary
It is coming up to 6pm in Gaza and in Tel Aviv. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Here is a recap of the latest developments:
All EU donors have now resumed their support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa), said Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, on Thursday. In a social media post, Borrell described Unrwa as “an indispensable lifeline in Gaza and the region”.
The Hostages Families Forum in Israel has released graphic footage of female Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas from a military base during the 7 October attacks. The three-minute video showed the women, all IDF personnel, sitting on the ground, some bruised and bloodied, with their hands tied after their capture from the Nahal Oz base in southern Israel.
Republican US House speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic US representative Pete Aguilar will deliver keynote speeches at the Israeli embassy’s Independence Day reception on Thursday.
At least 35,800 Palestinians have been killed and 80,011 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Thursday. The Hamas-run health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
Leaders of the Iran-led, so-called “axis of resistance”, including Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, discussed the war in Gaza during a meeting in Tehran on the sidelines of president Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral, reported state media.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said two pre-dawn Israeli airstrikes on Thursday killed 26 people in Gaza City, amid fierce battles between troops and militants across the Palestinian territory. Civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that one strike hit a family’s house, killing 16 people, while 10 others died when a mosque was struck in the second strike. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, while AFP was unable to independently verify the details of the two reported strikes.
Four organisations, including the European Legal Support Center and The Rights Forum, have filed a criminal complaint to public prosecutors in the Netherlands over properties listed by the travel website, Booking.com, on occupied Palestinian territories. The legal challenge, made public on Thursday, points to the listings to accuse the travel website, headquartered in the Netherlands, of profiting from crime and alleges that the proceeds of crime are being brought into the Dutch financial system. Booking.com did not reply to a request for comment.
The US is concerned about Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation among countries that have traditionally supported it, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has said.
Israel will reprimand the ambassadors of Ireland, Norway and Spain on Thursday over their governments’ plan to recognise a Palestinian state next week, an Israeli official said.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will rule on Friday 24 May on South Africa’s request to order a halt to Israel’s Rafah offensive in Gaza, it said on Thursday. “No power on Earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in Gaza,” said an Israeli government spokesperson when asked whether Israel would comply with a possible ICJ ruling against it.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is set to worsen once again as deliveries of aid and fuel to the Palestinian territory slow to a trickle in the wake of Israel’s two-week-old ground offensive in the southern city of Rafah.
A two-day Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin killed at least 12 Palestinians, health authorities and an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent reported. The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said Israeli forces had killed 12 people including four children, and injured 25 during the fighting which began on Tuesday morning.
Both Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian militant group Hamas condemned the raid. Israel’s army said on Wednesday troops had “exchanged fire with armed men and killed a number of terrorists, including two terrorists who threw explosives at the forces”.
Surgeon Usaeed Jabareen, from Jenin’s Khalil Suleiman government hospital, was among those killed on Tuesday said the official Palestinian news agency Wafa and medical charity Doctors Without Borders. An AFP correspondent on Thursday saw five bodies at the hospital morgue, including Jabareen’s.
Egypt has threatened to withdraw from its role as a mediator in Gaza ceasefire negotiations after a report by CNN that Egyptian intelligence changed the terms of a recent truce proposal, scuttling a deal. Quoting three people familiar with the discussions, CNN reported on Tuesday that Egyptian intelligence changed terms of a ceasefire proposal that Israel agreed to earlier in May.
Israeli forces killed 35 Palestinians in aerial and ground bombardments across the Gaza Strip on Thursday and battled in close combat with Hamas-led militants in areas of the southern city of Rafah, health officials and Hamas media said. Israeli tanks advanced in Rafah’s southeast, edged towards the city’s western district of Yibna and continued to operate in three eastern suburbs, residents told Reuters.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned of the risk of a “humanitarian crisis” if Israel cuts off a crucial financing channel to Palestinian banks. Ahead of a meeting of G7 finance ministers in Stresa in northern Italy, she told reporters: “I’m particularly concerned by Israel’s threats to take action that would lead to Palestinian banks being cut off from their Israeli correspondent banks.”
A United Nations expert called on Israel on Thursday to investigate multiple allegations of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees in the wake of the 7 October attack by Hamas. The UN special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, said in a statement she had received reports of some detainees being deprived of sleep, threatened with physical and sexual violence, insulted and exposed to humiliating acts, including “being photographed and filmed in degrading poses”. There was no immediate reaction from the Israeli government or military.
The US is worried that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may be willing to torpedo a potential normalisation deal with Saudi Arabia if it entails ending the war in Gaza and committing to working towards a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Lebanese schoolchildren on a minibus had a narrow escape on Thursday when a drone strike killed a Hezbollah fighter in the car ahead, blowing out the windscreen of their vehicle and injuring three pupils. The source close to Hezbollah told AFP that Israel was behind the strike, which killed a Hezbollah member who was named as Mohammad Ali Nasser Farran.
Later on Thursday, Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of rockets at a base in northern Israel. It said its katyusha barrage was “in response to the assassination carried out by the enemy in Kafardjal, and the injuring and terrorising of children”.
A merchant ship off the coast of Yemen reported a missile hitting the water nearby, the UK’s sea trade monitoring agency reported on Thursday, adding that the vessel and all crew were safe and proceeding to the next port of call.
Updated
Republican US House speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic US representative Pete Aguilar will deliver keynote speeches at the Israeli embassy’s Independence Day reception on Thursday, reports Reuters.
The gathering comes amid tensions between the Democratic US leader and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a US push for Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians in the war against Hamas militants in Gaza.
Reuters reports that it will be a chance for Johnson, an outspoken critic of president Joe Biden’s Israel policy, and Aguilar, a Biden ally, to lay out their views more than seven months into the conflict.
Successive US administration have usually sent senior officials to the Independence Day celebrations in Washington.
Vice-president Kamala Harris, who has called in recent weeks for a Gaza ceasefire, delivered last year’s keynote, mostly extolling US support for Israel. Homeland secretary Alejandro Mayorkas spoke the year before.
According to Reuters, an Israeli official said this year the embassy wanted to honor lawmakers with speaking roles in appreciation for congressional approval of new US military aid to Israel.
“Their participation highlights the strong, bipartisan support for Israel in the United States, and the Congress in particular, and speaks to the enduring Israel-US alliance,” the embassy said in a statement.
The reception takes place on the same night as a White House state dinner for Kenyan president William Ruto, which the Israeli official said created a scheduling conflict for senior members of the administration.
Other more junior administration officials are on the embassy’s guest list, according to the Israeli official.
Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives and the highest-ranking Republican in Congress, and Aguilar, chair of the House Democratic caucus, have both been granted keynote speaking slots on Thursday night, the embassy said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Reuters on the absence of an administration official from the speakers’ list.
Ashifa Kassam is the Guardian’s European community affairs correspondent.
Four organisations, including the European Legal Support Center and The Rights Forum, have filed a criminal complaint to public prosecutors in the Netherlands over properties listed by the travel website, Booking.com, on occupied Palestinian territories.
The company has long faced accusations of benefiting from such listings; a 2018 report by Human Rights Watch cited 26 properties listed on Booking.com in the occupied West Bank while in 2019 Amnesty International tallied 45 hotels and rentals in settlements, including in East Jerusalem, on the travel website.
The legal challenge, made public on Thursday, points to these listings to accuse the travel website, headquartered in the Netherlands, of profiting from crime and alleges that the proceeds of crime are being brought into the Dutch financial system.
Booking.com did not reply to a request for comment.
Lydia de Leeuw, from the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), said the complaint followed years of rights campaigners and activists warning the company about its operations on occupied land.
We have been working on this complaint for years, responding to calls of Palestinians who have seen their property being stolen to end up as profitable vacation homes for settlers on Booking.com.”
It comes more than five years after Airbnb said it would take down about 200 listings in occupied Palestinian territories, following years of accusations that the company was benefiting from rentals in the illegal outposts. After the hosts who were due to be removed joined a class action lawsuit, Airbnb reversed its decision, saying instead that it would donate proceeds from rentals in the West Bank to humanitarian organisations around the world.
At least 35,800 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, says health ministry
At least 35,800 Palestinians have been killed and 80,011 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
The Hamas-run health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
Updated
Lebanese schoolchildren on a minibus had a narrow escape on Thursday when a drone strike killed a Hezbollah fighter in the car ahead, blowing out the windscreen of their vehicle and injuring three pupils, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The injured children were hospitalised with cuts from flying glass after the aerial attack, which state media and a source close to Hezbollah blamed on Israel.
“At first, we didn’t understand what was happening, and there was panic among the children,” said Ahmad Qubaisi, 57, who was driving the bus with 18 children on board.
“Suddenly a strike hit the car in front of us” near the town of Nabatiyeh, about 13 kilometres (eight miles) from the Israeli border, he said.
“The bus’s windshield shattered … I backed up and that’s when the second strike hit the car” in front of him, Qubaisi added.
The source close to Hezbollah told AFP that Israel was behind the strike, which killed a Hezbollah member who was named as Mohammad Ali Nasser Farran.
At the site of Thursday’s strike, an AFP photographer said they saw the charred car and blood stains on the road.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported “an enemy drone attack in the morning on the Kfardjal-Nabatiyeh road”.
The attack “killed a car driver” and “wounded three pupils” who were in a bus heading to school, it said.
A Nabatiyeh school later said that the man killed, Farran, was also a physics teacher at the school and that it mourned his death, reports AFP.
Later on Thursday, Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of rockets at a base in northern Israel.
It said its katyusha barrage was “in response to the assassination carried out by the enemy in Kafardjal, and the injuring and terrorising of children”.
Updated
UN expert urges Israel to investigate reports of mistreated Palestinian detainees
A United Nations expert called on Israel on Thursday to investigate multiple allegations of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees in the wake of the 7 October attack by Hamas.
According to Reuters, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, said in a statement that she had received allegations of people being beaten, kept in cells blindfolded and handcuffed for long periods.
There was no immediate reaction from the Israeli government or military, reported Reuters.
The military has said it acts according to Israeli and international law and those it arrests get access to food, water, medication and proper clothing.
Reuters reports that the UN special rapporteur said she had received reports of some detainees being deprived of sleep, threatened with physical and sexual violence, insulted and exposed to humiliating acts, including “being photographed and filmed in degrading poses”.
“I am particularly concerned that this emerging pattern of violations, coupled with an absence of accountability and transparency, is creating a permissive environment for further abusive and humiliating treatment of Palestinians,” Edwards said.
“The Israeli authorities must investigate all complaints and reports of torture or ill-treatment promptly, impartially, effectively and transparently. Those responsible at all levels, including commanders, must be held accountable, while victims have a right to reparation and compensation,” she said.
Updated
'All EU donors have now resumed their support' to Unrwa, says Josep Borrell
Josep Borrell, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and vice-president of the European Commission, said that all EU donors have now resumed their support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa).
In a social media post, Borrell described Unrwa as “an indispensable lifeline in Gaza and the region”.
I commend the initiative in favour of @UNRWA, an indispensable lifeline in Gaza and in the region.
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) May 23, 2024
All EU donors have now resumed their support to the Agency, still in critical financial situation.
We have to step up our support; the needs are only growing. https://t.co/wOHmu3RdQx
Allegations by Israel of the involvement of Unrwa staff in the 7 October Hamas attack led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency.
At the end of April, Germany said it would restore cooperation and funding to Unrwa operations in the Gaza Strip after an independent review said Israel had not provided evidence to back up its claims.
Germany’s decision followed those made earlier by several other major donors, including Australia, Canada, Sweden and Japan, to restore ties with Unwra.
Last week, Austria also said it would restore its funding to Unrwa. A total of €3.4m ($3.7m) in funds have been budgeted for 2024, and the first payment is expected to be made in the summer, Austria’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Updated
Excerpts from footage released by a group representing the families of hostages held in Gaza show the capture of five female Israeli soldiers by Hamas from a military base during the 7 October attacks.
A three-minute edit, released on Wednesday, was taken from a two-hour video filmed by Hamas militants’ body cameras. It showed the women, some bruised and bloodied, with their hands tied after their capture from the Nahal Oz base in southern Israel.
About 250 people were taken hostage when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing at least 1,200 people. As a result of Israel’s retaliatory offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, at least 35,386 people have been killed and 79,366 have been injured, according to the Gaza health ministry.
You can read Lorenzo Tondo’s full piece on this story here:
Tomorrow, the International Court of Justice will announce its decision on South Africa’s request for an order to halt Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip.
Ahead of that verdict, Israel has said it will not be deterred from pursuing its war on Hamas.
Asked whether Israel would comply with a possible ICJ ruling against it, an Israeli government spokesperson said:
No power on Earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in Gaza.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned of the risk of a “humanitarian crisis” if Israel cuts off a crucial financing channel to Palestinian banks.
Ahead of a meeting of G7 finance ministers in Stresa in northern Italy, she told reporters:
I’m particularly concerned by Israel’s threats to take action that would lead to Palestinian banks being cut off from their Israeli correspondent banks
These banking channels are critical for processing transactions that enable almost $8 billion a year in imports from Israel, including electricity, water, fuel, and food, as well as facilitating almost $2 billion a year in exports on which Palestinian livelihoods depend.
Asked what the United States and G7 might do in response, Yellen said she had written to Israeli President Benyamin Netanyahu months ago about the economic situation in the occupied West Bank.
And as I said, I believe it would create a humanitarian crisis in due course if Palestinian banks are cut off from Israeli correspondence. Certainly, this is a view that we will voice.
The day so far
It’s just gone 2pm in Gaza and Jerusalem. Here are the day’s main developments so far:
The Hostages Families Forum in Israel has released graphic footage of female Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas from a military base during the 7 October attacks. The three-minute video showed the women, all IDF personnel, sitting on the ground, some bruised and bloodied, with their hands tied after their capture from the Nahal Oz base in southern Israel.
The US is concerned about Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation among countries that have traditionally supported it, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has said.
Israel will reprimand the ambassadors of Ireland, Norway and Spain on Thursday over their governments’ plan to recognise a Palestinian state next week, an Israeli official said.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is set to worsen once again as deliveries of aid and fuel to the Palestinian territory slow to a trickle in the wake of Israel’s two-week-old ground offensive in the southern city of Rafah.
A two-day Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin killed at least 12 Palestinians, health authorities and an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent reported.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images on the newswires:
Dutch prosecutors are looking into a criminal complaint against Booking.com over its listing of rental properties in Israeli settlements, reports Reuters.
According to Reuters, Dutch non-profit organisation SOMO said it had filed the complaint with the Dutch public prosecutor in November, together with three other human rights groups, but had not gone public with it before.
In their complaint the groups accuse Booking.com of “profiting from war crimes by facilitating the rental of vacation homes on land stolen from the indigenous Palestinian population”.
Prosecutors were studying the complaint, but could not give a timeline for a decision on possible further steps, spokesperson Brechje van de Moosdijk said.
Booking.com in a response said it disagreed with the allegations and that there are no laws prohibiting listings in Israeli settlements, while a range of US state laws would prohibit divesting from the region, reports Reuters.
“Legal action has been taken against other companies that have tried to withdraw their activities, and we would expect the same to happen in our case,” a spokesperson for the company said.
SOMO said its research had shown that Booking.com’s platform offered up to 70 listings for properties in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank between 2021 and 2023.
It argued that revenues acquired from renting out those properties are “proceeds of criminal activities”, and that by booking these proceeds in the Netherlands the company is violating Dutch anti-money laundering rules.
Leaders of the Iran-led, so-called “axis of resistance”, including Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, discussed the war in Gaza during a meeting in Tehran on the sidelines of president Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP) citing state media.
The “axis of resistance” is a network of autonomous militant Islamist groups through which Iran can project power, determine the course of events and deter attack by Israel or the US.
AFP reports that the meeting on Wednesday was attended by Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s Qatar-based political bureau, as well as Hezbollah deputy Naim Qassem and Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam.
According to AFP’s report, Haniyeh had also previously had an audience with Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iranian officials meanwhile included Gen Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as Gen Esmail Qaani, commander of the al-Quds force, the foreign operations branch of the guards.
They discussed “the latest political, social and military situation in Gaza and the al-Aqsa flood operation and the role of the resistance front,” state broadcaster IRIB reported.
The meeting reportedly stressed “the continuation of jihad and struggle until the complete victory of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza with the participation of all resistance groups and fronts in the region”, IRIB said.
AFP reports that Hezbollah’s Al-Manar channel also reported the meeting, broadcasting photos.
Iran’s Fars news agency said representatives of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Iraqi groups were also present at the meeting.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said two pre-dawn Israeli airstrikes on Thursday killed 26 people in Gaza City, amid fierce battles between troops and militants across the Palestinian territory, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, while AFP was unable to independently verify the details of the two reported strikes.
Civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that one strike hit a family’s house, killing 16 people, while 10 others died when a mosque was struck in the second strike.
Bassal said the dead included at least 15 children, including 10 who were killed when their family’s house was hit in the al-Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Five children died when their school inside a mosque complex was hit, he said, adding that rescue teams had pulled out several injured from the strikes.
Two-day Israeli raid on West Bank city leaves 12 Palestinians dead, say health authorities
A two-day Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin killed at least 12 Palestinians, health authorities and an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent said on Thursday.
Israeli troops withdrew from the city early Thursday, the AFP correspondent said, after carrying out raids in the city’s refugee camp and exchanging fire with masked gunmen in a nearby neighbourhood in the city centre.
The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said Israeli forces had killed 12 people including four children, and injured 25 during the fighting which began on Tuesday morning.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa and medical charity Doctors Without Borders reported that surgeon Usaeed Jabareen, from Jenin’s Khalil Suleiman government hospital, was among those killed on Tuesday.
Raids by Israeli forces in Jenin, #WestBank, Palestine, have left at least 8 people dead, including Dr Osayd Jabarin, a Ministry of Health surgeon from MSF-supported Khalil Suleiman hospital, who was shot on his way to work.
— MSF International (@MSF) May 21, 2024
An AFP correspondent on Thursday saw five bodies at the hospital morgue, including Jabareen’s.
A schoolteacher and a student were also among the dead, Wafa reported, quoting hospital director Wissam Bakr.
AFP reports that several of the bodies were draped in flags and carried among crowds of Palestinians, including armed militants, through the streets as gunfire rang out.
Both Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian militant group Hamas condemned the raid.
Israel’s army said on Wednesday troops had “exchanged fire with armed men and killed a number of terrorists, including two terrorists who threw explosives at the forces”.
The army said it had raided the house of Ahmed Barakat, who was suspected of involvement in an attack on an Israeli civilian last year.
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has seen a surge in violence for more than a year, but especially so since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on 7 October, reports AFP.
At least 518 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war broke out, according to Palestinian officials.
Attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 12 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Updated
A merchant ship off the coast of Yemen reported a missile hitting the water nearby, the UK’s sea trade monitoring agency reported on Thursday, adding that the vessel and all crew were safe and proceeding to the next port of call.
Reuters reports that the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency said it had received a report of the incident 98 nautical miles (NM) south of Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah. The master of the merchant vessel had reported the missile impacting the water near the ship’s port side.
UKMTO WARNING INCIDENT 073 UPDATE 001https://t.co/6mNrG6WD8m#MaritimeSecurity #MarSec pic.twitter.com/t7mzh6HMO1
— United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) (@UK_MTO) May 23, 2024
British security firm Ambrey said it received a report that a merchant vessel was approached 68 nautical miles southwest of Hodeidah and had experienced what it described as a “missile attack.” “No injuries or damages were reported,” Ambrey said.
According to Reuters, Ambrey separately sent another advisory note after saying a merchant vessel reported a projectile impact on the water approximately 33 nautical miles south of Yemen’s Mocha.
“The projectile reportedly impacted the water 0.2 NM aft of the vessel. 2.5 hours prior another merchant vessel had reported a ‘missile attack’ west of Mocha,” Ambrey added.
The two vessels were transiting at a distance of 2-5 NM from each other during the incidents, it said.
US worried Netanyahu may torpedo normalisation deal with Saudi Arabia
Bethan McKernan is Jerusalem correspondent for the Guardian.
The US is worried that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may be willing to torpedo a potential normalisation deal with Saudi Arabia if it entails ending the war in Gaza and committing to working towards a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told the Senate’s foreign relations committee on Tuesday: “There’s an opportunity for Israel to become integrated in the region, to get the fundamental security it needs and wants, to have the relationships it’s wanted since its founding. The Saudis have been clear that this would require calm in Gaza and a credible pathway to a Palestinian state,” he said, adding: “It may well be at this moment, Israel is not able or willing to proceed down this pathway.”
The Biden administration has been working for some time on a plan in which Riyadh would normalise relations with Israel in return for a formal defence pact with the US and assistance in developing a civilian nuclear programme.
For Israel, normalisation with the Saudi kingdom – the anchor of Sunni Islam and home to the religion’s two holiest sites – could in theory pave the way for the acceptance of the Jewish state across the Muslim world and shore up a nascent Arab-Israeli defence coalition against Iran.
Since the new war in Gaza began, the US has made ending the conflict a condition of a deal, as well as Israeli consent for a new governing mechanism in the strip involving the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. A success would be a foreign policy boon for the US president, Joe Biden, who is facing an uphill battle for re-election in November.
You can read Bethan McKernan’s full report here:
Israeli forces killed 35 Palestinians in aerial and ground bombardments across the Gaza Strip on Thursday and battled in close combat with Hamas-led militants in areas of the southern city of Rafah, health officials and Hamas media said, according to the Reuters news agency.
Israeli tanks advanced in Rafah’s southeast, edged towards the city’s western district of Yibna and continued to operate in three eastern suburbs, residents told Reuters.
“The occupation [Israeli forces] is trying to move further to the west, they are on the edge of Yibna, which is densely populated. They didn’t invade it yet,” one resident told Reuters, asking not to be named.
“We hear explosions and we see black smoke coming up from the areas where the army has invaded. It was another very difficult night,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
Reuters reports that simultaneous Israeli assaults on the northern and southern edges of Gaza this month have caused a new exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing their homes, and have cut off the main access routes for aid, raising the risk of famine.
Israel’s troops have been slowly moving into the eastern outskirts of Rafah since the start of the month.
“The troops are currently operating based on information regarding terror targets in the areas of ‘Brazil’ and ‘Shaboura’ while making every effort to prevent harm to civilians and after the civilian population in the area was evacuated,” the Israeli military said in a statement. Palestinian residents told Reuters there had been no incursion in Shaboura in the centre of Rafah.
“IDF troops located a rocket launcher ready to fire at IDF troops. Moreover, the troops located and dismantled a number of terror tunnel shafts and launchers in the area, and eliminated several terrorists during close-quarters encounters,” the Israeli military statement added.
The main United Nations agency in Gaza, Unrwa, estimated as of Monday that more than 800,000 people had fled Rafah since Israel began targeting the city in early May, despite international pleas for restraint.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will rule on Friday 24 May on South Africa’s request to order a halt to Israel’s Rafah offensive in Gaza, it said on Thursday.
Humanitarian operations ‘near collapse’ in Gaza, says World Food Programme
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is set to worsen once again as deliveries of aid and fuel to the Palestinian territory slow to a trickle in the wake of Israel’s two-week-old ground offensive in the southern city of Rafah.
The UN has suspended food distribution in Rafah owing to a lack of supplies and insecurity, the world body said late on Tuesday, and delivery operations from the new US-funded floating pier have also been halted after desperate people seized most of the shipment offloaded on to trucks on Saturday, an incident in which one person was killed.
Since 10 May, shortly after Israel seized control of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, through which the majority of aid to Gaza flows, only about three dozen trucks have successfully been delivered via the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing, and only about a quarter of the allowed fuel has been delivered since the Israeli operation began.
The ongoing fighting means that both Kerem Shalom and Rafah are effectively blocked, and perishable food and medicine is piling up on the Egyptian side of the border. Egypt and Israel have traded blame over a failure to negotiate Rafah’s reopening, which has also prevented sick and injured Palestinians from leaving the strip for treatment elsewhere.
You can read the full piece by Bethan McKernan and Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem here:
Updated
Israel to reprimand Irish, Norwegian, Spanish envoys over Palestine move
Israel will reprimand the ambassadors of Ireland, Norway and Spain on Thursday over their governments’ plan to recognise a Palestinian state next week, an Israeli official said.
Reuters reports that the envoys have been summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, where they will be shown a previously unpublished video of Hamas taking female captives during its 7 October attack on Israel, the official said.
Israel has also recalled its own ambassadors in Dublin, Oslo and Madrid for consultations.
Announcing on Wednesday that they would recognise a Palestinian state on 28 May, the three European countries said they wanted to help secure a Gaza truce and revive peace talks. Some other western powers, such as the US, say recognition of a Palestinian state should follow negotiations.
US ‘concerned’ by Israel’s isolation, Biden national security adviser says
Robert Tait is a journalist based in Washington DC. He was previously
the Guardian’s correspondent in Czech Republic, Iran and Turkey.
The US is concerned about Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation among countries that have traditionally supported it, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Wednesday.
Sullivan’s remarks, at a White House briefing, followed the announcement by Ireland, Spain and Norway that they will next week formally recognise a Palestinian state. They also came amid efforts by the Biden administration and Congress to coordinate a response to a decision by the international criminal court (ICC) to seek an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over Israeli actions in Gaza.
Asked if he was concerned about Israel’s diplomatic isolation, Sullivan – who is due to visit the country in the coming days – answered affirmatively.
“I think it’s a fair question,” he said. “As a country that stands strong in defense of Israel in international forums like the United Nations, we certainly have seen a growing chorus of voices, including voices that had previously been in support of Israel, drift in another direction. That is of concern to us because we do not believe that that contributes to Israel’s long-term security or vitality … So that’s something we have discussed with the Israeli government.”
You can read more on this story here:
Hostages Families Forum release graphic footage of female Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas during 7 October attack
The Hostages Families Forum in Israel on Wednesday released graphic footage of five female Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas from a military base during the 7 October attacks.
The three-minute video showed the women, all Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel, sitting on the ground, some bruised and bloodied, with their hands tied after their capture from the Nahal Oz base in southern Israel.
The footage, taken from a two-hour video filmed on a body camera by Hamas militants during the attack, was previously released by Hamas. The families obtained it months ago by the IDF, which had previously edited the video to exclude the most disturbing scenes.
“The footage reveals the violent, humiliating, and traumatising treatment the girls endured on the day of their abduction, their eyes filled with raw terror,” the forum said.
“I think that the message here is to the international community, in a time where we are seeing US president Joe Biden threatening he is not going to supply weapons to Israel, we are seeing three European countries recognising the Palestinian state. All of this is happening while our hostages are still in Gaza,’’ Ashley Waxman Bakshi, a cousin of Agam Berger, one of the women in the video, told the Guardian.
Waxman Bakshi said: “That is sending a message to Hamas that they have no reason to negotiate a deal for their release. Why should they? We want to send a message to the international community to remind people that this war started because of 7 October, because of our hostages that are still there, while the international community has focused only on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Nobody is talking about our humanitarian crisis, our hostages.’’
“Release the hostages and the situation will improve,’’ she adds.
Thousands of Israelis joined protests in recent weeks calling for a deal to bring home hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas, early elections and the immediate resignation of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“This hostage crisis is not only a failure of the Israeli government, it is also a failure of the international community,’’ said Waxman Bakshi.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack in Israel in which 1,200 died, mainly civilians, and about 250 were taken hostage.
As a result of Israel’s retaliatory offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, at least 35,386 Palestinians have been killed and 79,366 have been wounded, the Gaza health ministry said on Saturday.
About half of the approximately 250 people abducted on 7 October have since been freed, most in swaps for Israeli-held Palestinian prisoners during a week-long ceasefire in November. According to Israeli authorities, about 30 are confirmed to have died.
Last Saturday, the Families Forum released a statement saying one hostage, Ron Benjamin, had died. The organisation’s statement said 128 hostages remained in captivity.
The bodies of three hostages kidnapped by Hamas, including the German-Israeli Shani Louk, have been retrieved from Gaza by the Israeli military, it announced.
The other two hostages were identified as Amit Buskila, 28, and Itzhak Gelerenter, 56, according to the military spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari, who said the three victims were taken to Gaza after being killed by Hamas at the Nova music festival.
Footage of what appeared to be the body of Louk, 22, on the back of a pickup truck on the streets of Gaza was among the first images to surface after 7 October, as the scale of the attacks became clear.
Update: an earlier version of this post said the video showed seven hostages. Seven hostages were taken from the Nahal Oz base, but the video only shows five.
Updated
Opening summary
It has gone 10am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest Guardian live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.
Egypt has threatened to withdraw from its role as a mediator in Gaza ceasefire negotiations after a report by CNN that Egyptian intelligence changed the terms of a recent truce proposal, scuttling a deal, reports Reuters.
Diaa Rashwan, head of Egypt’s State Information Service, said in a statement published on social media:
Attempts to cast doubt and offend Egypt’s mediation efforts … will only lead to further complications of the situation in Gaza and the entire region and may push Egypt to completely withdraw from its mediation in the current conflict.
Quoting three people familiar with the discussions, CNN reported on Tuesday that Egyptian intelligence changed terms of a ceasefire proposal that Israel agreed to earlier in May.
When Hamas announced on 6 May that it accepted the agreement, it was not the proposal that fellow mediators from the US and Qatar thought was submitted to Hamas for review, according to CNN.
The CIA, whose director, William Burns, has been leading the US mediation efforts, declined to comment on the report.
Rashwan said in the statement that Cairo’s participation as a mediator resulted from “repeated requests and insistence” from Israel and the US.
Egypt said some “parties” recently directed blame towards Egyptian and Qatari mediators and accused them of being biased, he added.
Tensions have been growing between Egypt and Israel over the Israeli military operation in Rafah at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, just across the border from Egypt.
More on that in a moment but first, here is a summary of the latest developments:
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is set to worsen once again as deliveries of aid and fuel to the Palestinian territory slow to a trickle in the wake of Israel’s two-week-old ground offensive in the southern city of Rafah. The UN has suspended food distribution in Rafah owing to a lack of supplies and insecurity, the world body said late on Tuesday, and delivery operations from the new US-funded floating pier have also been halted after desperate people seized most of the shipment offloaded on to trucks on Saturday, an incident in which one person was killed.
The UN World Food Program says it has handed out in Gaza in recent days a “limited number” of high-energy biscuits that arrived from a US-built pier, the first aid from the new humanitarian sea route to get into the hands of Palestinians, reports Associated Press.
Ireland, Spain and Norway announced plans to formally recognise a Palestinian state on Wednesday, amid warnings from Israel that recognition will ‘fuel extremism and instability’. Ireland’s prime minister Simon Harris said a two-state solution was the only credible path to peace and security for Israel, Palestine and their peoples. The recognition of statehood has particular resonance in Ireland given its history, Harris added. He also said that Ireland was unequivocal in fully recognising Israel and its right to exist “securely and in peace with its neighbours”, and he called for all hostages in Gaza to be immediately returned.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas both welcomed on Wednesday the recognition of a Palestinian state by Ireland, Spain and Norway.
Israel have “instructed for the immediate recall” of Israel’s ambassadors to Ireland and Norway for “consultations”. Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz shared a post with the news on X on Wednesday, saying that it was “in light of these countries’ decisions to recognise a Palestinian state”.
US president Joe Biden believes a Palestinian state should be achieved through negotiations, not unilateral recognition, the White House said on Wednesday after Ireland, Spain and Norway said they would recognise a Palestinian state this month.
The US is concerned about Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation among countries that have traditionally supported it, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Wednesday.
The Israeli military has approved permission for Israelis to return to three former West Bank settlements they had been banned from entering since an evacuation ordered in 2005, the defence ministry said on Wednesday. The three settlements, Sa-nur, Ganim and Kadim, are located near the Palestinian cities of Jenin and Nablus.
Colombia said on Wednesday that it will open an embassy in Ramallah in the Palestinian territories. Foreign Minister Luis Murillo told reporters that president Gustavo Petro – an ardent critic of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu – had given instructions “that we install the embassy of Colombia in Ramallah” in the West Bank, reported Reuters.
Israeli tanks advanced to the edge of a crowded district in the heart of Rafah on Wednesday during one of the most intense nights of bombardment of the southern Gaza city since Israel launched its offensive there this month. Residents and militants told Reuters that tanks had taken up new positions farther west than before along the southern border fence with Egypt. They said Israeli troops were now stationed on the edge of the Yibna neighbourhood at the centre of Rafah.
Heavy battles also rocked Gaza’s northern and central areas where Hamas forces have regrouped, and more Israeli airstrikes have hit Gaza City, Jabalia and Zeitun.
The World Health Organization said northern Gaza’s last two functioning hospitals, al-Awda and Kamal Adwan, were besieged by Israeli forces, with more than 200 patients trapped inside.
At least 35,709 Palestinians have been killed and 79,990 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. The Hamas-run health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
Iran’s supreme leader led prayers in Tehran on Wednesday at the funeral of the late president Ebrahim Raisi, as tens of thousands of mourners thronged streets at the funeral in Iran’s capital city, which will move to the cleric’s eastern home city of Mashhad for burial on Thursday.
The US is worried that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may be willing to torpedo a potential normalisation deal with Saudi Arabia if it entails ending the war in Gaza and committing to working towards a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
