Closing summary
It has just gone 5pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Israel-Gaza war coverage here and on the Middle East here.
Here is a recap of the latest developments:
Israeli forces have killed about 300 Palestinian gunmen during an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah launched on 6 May, Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said on Thursday.
Rafah residents reported intense artillery shelling and gunfire on Thursday. On the ground in the Gaza Strip, witnesses reported fighting in central and western Rafah, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). According to the news agency, witnesses also said Israeli forces had demolished several buildings in the city’s eastern areas.
An AFP correspondent reported artillery and gunfire in Gaza City’s southern neighbourhood of Zeitun, in the territory’s north, where witnesses saw thick plumes of smoke rising over Jabalia refugee camp and Beit Lahia.
Israel is in effective control of Gaza’s entire land border after taking control of a buffer zone along the border with Egypt, Israel’s military has said, a move that risks complicating its relationship with Egypt. In a televised briefing on Wednesday, chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces had gained “operational” control over the Philadelphi Corridor, using the Israeli military’s code name for the 14km-long corridor along the Gaza Strip’s only border with Egypt.
Egypt has rejected Israel’s claims of smuggling tunnels running beneath the buffer zone. Al-Qahera News reported that Israel was using claims of tunnels under Egypt’s border with Gaza as cover for its Rafah offensive, citing a “high-level Egyptian source”. “There is no truth to Israeli media reports of the existence of tunnels on the Egyptian border with Gaza,” the source told Al-Qahera.
Israel sent messages to Tehran via Egypt that it would “compromise” in Gaza to avert an Iranian response to an attack on Iran’s embassy in Syria, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. It cited the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) aerospace force, Amirali Hajizadeh, who also said of Iran’s first ever direct attack on Israel: “We had to use a great number of missiles and drones to get through Israel’s Iron Dome, we used 20% of our military capability in the operation.” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately give a comment to Thursday’s reports, said Reuters.
Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged the international community to ensure Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are not displaced from their war-ravaged territory. “I … call on the international community to immediately provide for long term humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip and to end the Israeli siege,” Sisi said. He also called for the international community to “stop any attempt at forcing Palestinians to forcibly flee their land”.
A car ramming attack killed two Israeli soldiers near the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army said early on Thursday. It identified them as soldiers Eliya Hilel and Diego Shvisha Harsaj, both 20 and members of the Kfir brigade. According to Israeli media, the army has launched a manhunt for the perpetrator of the attack. Hamas welcomed the attack near Nablus, saying in a statement it was a “natural response” against the “crimes of the enemy”.
EU workers staged a silent protest over the continuing attacks on Rafah outside the main institutional buildings in Brussels on Thursday. Some held banners declaring “civil servants demand ceasefire in Gaza” while others called for the end to “EU Israel agreements that don’t respect EU values”. It comes less than a week after 200 staffers wrote to protest against what they believe is an insufficient response by the EU to the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Humanitarian aid for Gaza is continuing to depart Cyprus by sea and will be held in floating storage until a US-built military pier undergoes repairs, a Cypriot spokesperson said on Thursday.
Efforts by Israel’s intelligence agencies to undermine and influence the international criminal court (ICC) could amount to “offences against the administration of justice” and should be investigated by its chief prosecutor, legal experts have said. Responding to revelations about Israeli surveillance and espionage operations against the ICC, multiple leading international law experts said the conduct of Israeli intelligence services could amount to criminal offences.
More than 16,000 people are now living in a Deir Al-Balah school, said the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa) on Thursday. “The living conditions are dire, with scarce resources, insufficient sanitation facilities and very limited supplies,” it said.
Israel has not given a response to France on Paris’ proposals to reduce tensions between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, France’s foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday. “We have had a relatively positive response from the Lebanese, but I think we have not had any return from Israel at this point,” French foreign ministry spokesperson, Christophe Lemoine, told reporters in a daily briefing.
Janez Lenarčič, the European commissioner for crisis management, called on Israel to “stop its campaign against Unrwa”. In a post on X, Lenarčič said he called on Israe to “refrain from proceeding with law designating Unrwa as a terrorist organisation” and to “comply with its legal obligation to ensure safety and security of Unrwa staff and premises”.
Chinese president Xi Jinping called on Thursday for a peace conference on the war between Israel and Hamas, as he addressed Arab leaders at a forum aimed at bolstering ties with the region. Xi is this week hosting Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Emirati president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and several other Arab leaders.
The charity, ActionAid described Israeli military pressing on with its ground invasion of Rafah as a “flagrant disregard of the binding ICJ ruling issued on 24 May”. Riham Jafari, communications and advocacy coordinator at ActionAid Palestine, said: “The last few days have been utterly harrowing. Our colleagues and partners in Gaza are at a total loss as to what they can do and where they can go, when death surrounds them everywhere they turn and nowhere is safe.”
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Thursday in Tehran, Iran’s Student News Network (SNN) said. SNN said that Assad had expressed condolences over the recent death of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.
Iran has started the registration of candidates for an early election next month after the death of president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, Iranian interior minister Ahmad Vahidi told state TV. “The vetting process will be seven days and then qualified candidates will have almost two weeks for the election campaign,” said Vahidi.
Hundreds of public servants from across Australia and across state and federal agencies have signed an open letter calling for the federal government to “immediately cease all military exports to Israel”. The letter, signed by more than 300 people, notes a warning from UN experts in February that the transport of weapons or ammunition to Israel to be used in Gaza is likely to violate international humanitarian law. The warning named Australia as an exporter of weapons to Israel, a claim the government denies.
Updated
The charity, ActionAid has released a statement on Israel’s continued attacks on Rafah, saying that the “Israeli military is pressing on with its ground invasion of Rafah in flagrant disregard of the binding ICJ ruling issued on 24 May, which ordered it to halt its offensive in the city”.
Amjad Al Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO), an umbrella organisation of 30 Palestinian NGOs and a partner of ActionAid Palestine, said:
We have these attacks on different areas, [such as] Al Mawasi which was considered as a safe place … This is [a] serious situation. Since the beginning of this war, we didn’t witness such escalation on all levels. It has serious implications on the lives of people who are now in very critical conditions due to the shortage of humanitarian aid.”
Riham Jafari, communications and advocacy coordinator at ActionAid Palestine, said:
The last few days have been utterly harrowing. Our colleagues and partners in Gaza are at a total loss as to what they can do and where they can go, when death surrounds them everywhere they turn and nowhere is safe.
The Israeli military has shown total disregard by ignoring the binding ruling from the UN’s top court and pursuing its deadly invasion of Rafah.
It must be held accountable for the horrific attack there on Sunday night and other atrocities since and pressured to stop its offensive. Words of condemnation are not enough, states must take bold action now.”
Amjad, who ActionAid say fled from Rafah earlier in May, described how a shortage of fuel had led to untreated sewage and uncollected rubbish.
Amjad said:
The untreated sewage channels [are now] between the tents, which is a serious concern for the people who are living in these plastic or cloth tents. It has serious implications on the health situation and we have concerns regarding the contagious diseases.
The fuel effects the water operations to produce water for daily use and for [the] desalination plant to produce drinking water. The number of people increased and the water facilities cannot function well to deal with this big number because of the fuel shortage. It’s an unprecedented catastrophe.”
Speaking on behalf of ActionAid, Jafari said: “Yet again, we call for an end to this nightmare and for a permanent ceasefire now.”
