Closing summary
A large-scale vaccination campaign to inoculate children against the newly emerged threat of polio in the Gaza Strip has continued into its third day, despite ongoing Israeli airstrikes. The World Health Organization said it is ahead of its targets for polio vaccinations. It vaccinated over 161,000 children under 10 in the central area in the first two days of its campaign versus a projected 150,000.
A journalist from the Agence France-Presse news agency reported troops blowing up homes in Gaza City and warplanes hitting a house to the east overnight into Tuesday. The territory’s civil defence agency said Israel carried out a deadly strike on a tent sheltering displaced people in southern Khan Younis, as well as bombarding central Gaza.
Israeli forces continued their assault on the city of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, and its camp for the seventh consecutive day. Israeli soldiers also were reported to have caused widespread destruction to the infrastructure contained within the Tulkarm refugee camp. At least 30 people have been killed in Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank since Wednesday, according to Al Jazeera.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, described the UK’s government’s decision to suspend around 30 out of 350 export licences to Israel as “shameful”. But human rights groups have called for the suspension of all new and existing licenses to Israel, saying the new restrictions are full of loopholes.
At least 40,819 Palestinian people have been killed and 94,291 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. The toll includes 33 Palestinians killed in the previous 24 hours.
Sources within Israel’s justice ministry believe the International Criminal Court will decide in the coming days on whether to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Updated
Israeli forces cause widespread destruction to Tulkarm refugee camp - report
We mentioned in an earlier post that the Gaza health ministry has reported that Israeli forces have killed 33 Palestinians across Gaza in the past 24 hours.
Among those killed were four women in the southern city of Rafah and eight people near a hospital in Gaza City in the north, the Palestinian civil emergency service said. Others were killed in separate air strikes across the territory, it said.
Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported today that Israeli soldiers have caused widespread destruction to the infrastructure contained within the Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
This report is from Wafa. The claims in it have not yet been independently verified by the Guardian:
The occupation forces sent more vehicles to the camp, imposed a tight siege and curfew, and banned citizens from moving, while firing bullets randomly, with the sounds of explosions heard inside the camp’s alleys.
The occupation’s heavy bulldozers are razing and destroying streets and infrastructure in the alleys of Al-Hamam, Al-Sawalma, Al-Rabaia, and Al-Balawneh.
The water, electricity, and communications networks were also damaged during this aggression, which led to their interruption and interference in the internet networks.
The Israeli military launched an assault across the West Bank last week. Israeli leaders say it is designed to pre-empt attacks on Israelis after a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last month. The military operations have involved widespread destruction, mass detentions and targeted killings.
In total, “there are 30 martyrs and about 130 wounded in the West Bank since Wednesday,” when the Israeli military launched a series of coordinated raids, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement.
Updated
The Israeli government has approved a fourth renewal of its decision to close Al Jazeera’s office in Jerusalem and ban it in Israel for another 45 days, the outlet reported.
The network, which is funded by Qatar, has been critical of Israel’s war on Gaza, from where it has reported around the clock since October. Israeli officials have said Al Jazeera is a threat to national security.
Al Jazeera said the accusation that it threatened Israeli security was a “dangerous and ridiculous lie” that put its journalists at risk.
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, ratified a law in April that permitted the temporary closure of foreign broadcasters considered a threat to national security.
The law allows the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his security cabinet to shut Al Jazeera’s offices in Israel for 45 days, a period that can be renewed.
Updated
A legal challenge to the Labour government’s arms to Israel policy is continuing despite David Lammy’s announcement in the Commons of a partial suspension of weapons exports on Monday, though it is expected to refocus on the legality of continuing to allow the sale of components for F-35 fighters and the consistency of the government’s position.
Phillippa Kaufman KC, appearing for al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group and the Global Legal Action Network, said at the High Court the organisations wanted to proceed with a judicial review during a procedural hearing “to bottom out” why the UK says it cannot exclude some F-35 components in jets which are sold to and used by Israel in its bombing campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
The lawyer also said before Mr Justice Chamberlain that the campaign groups wanted to challenge the failure by the UK to determine whether the intense bombing in Gaza, which has contributed to the deaths of 40,786 Palestinians, was in breach of international humanitarian law because of the high proportion of civilian casualties.
Lammy had told MPs, Kaufman said, that “in many cases, it has not been possible to reach a determinative conclusion on allegations regarding Israel’s conduct of hostilities”. But she told the court on Tuesday morning that that represented “precisely the approach we submit is wrong in law”.
Instead, in suspending arms sales Lammy had argued that Israel could reasonably do much more to ensure lifesaving food and medical supplies reach civilians in Gaza and that the UK government was “deeply concerned by credible claims of mistreatment of detainees”.
Government guidelines prohibit arms exports to countries where there is a “clear risk” that international humanitarian law will be breached and war crimes committed. Revised submissions on behalf of al-Haq and GLAN are due to be made by the end of the month with proceedings continuing into the autumn.
Summary of the day so far...
A large-scale vaccination campaign to inoculate children against the newly emerged threat of polio in the Gaza Strip has continued into its third day, despite ongoing Israeli airstrikes. The World Health Organization said it is ahead of its targets for polio vaccinations. It vaccinated over 161,000 children under 10 in the central area in the first two days of its campaign versus a projected 150,000.
A journalist from the Agence France-Presse news agency reported troops blowing up homes in Gaza City and warplanes hitting a house to the east overnight into Tuesday. The territory’s civil defence agency said Israel carried out a deadly strike on a tent sheltering displaced people in southern Khan Younis, as well as bombarding central Gaza.
Israeli forces continued their assault on the city of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, and its camp for the seventh consecutive day.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, described the UK’s government’s decision to suspend around 30 out of 350 export licences to Israel as “shameful”. But human rights groups have called for the suspension of all new and existing licenses to Israel, saying the new restrictions are full of loopholes.
At least 40,819 Palestinian people have been killed and 94,291 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. The toll includes 33 Palestinians killed in the previous 24 hours.
Sources within Israel’s justice ministry believe the International Criminal Court (ICC) will decide in the coming days on whether to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Updated
Daniel Hurst is Guardian Australia’s foreign affairs and defence correspondent
A person who likes a tweet supporting the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel will not pass a security assessment for an Australian visa, the head of the Asio spy agency has said.
Mike Burgess used an interview with the ABC’s 7.30 program on Tuesday to hit back at people who had “distorted” what he had previously said about the security vetting process for Palestinians seeking to come to Australia.
Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday the Coalition should “stop undermining” Asio, but the opposition has insisted it was never questioning Burgess’s integrity.
The question of support for Hamas was elevated as a major political issue by the Coalition, which chose to make Gaza visa security checks its main topic of attention during the most recent parliamentary sitting fortnight.
The opposition says Australia’s approach to refugees from Gaza is too generous. Who is actually being let in?
The Coalition elevated the issue despite figures showing the government had rejected significantly more visa applications than it had approved and that no one was coming now because the Rafah crossing out of Gaza had been closed since May.
Death toll in Gaza reaches 40,819, says health ministry
At least 40,819 Palestinian people have been killed and 94,291 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. The toll includes 33 Palestinians killed in the previous 24 hours.
The health ministry has said thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the enclave.
ICC likely to decide whether to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant 'over coming days' - report
Sources within Israel’s justice ministry believe the International Criminal Court (ICC) will decide in the coming days on whether to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports. The sources are “cautiously optimstic” the court will decide against issuing the warrants, according to Chen Maanit, a reporter from Haaretz.
ICC prosecutors say there are reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, military chief Mohammed Al-Masri, and another Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, bear criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Gallant and Netanyahu have both rejected the allegations put forward by the ICC’s prosecutor.
Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran late July. The court has since declined to comment on reports of his death. Israel has said it killed Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, but Hamas would neither confirm or deny this.
Haaretz reports:
The officials said the government’s refusal to set up a state commission of inquiry to investigate the events of the war, as recommended by attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara, along with the fact that Israel has been lagging in its own investigations of alleged war crimes – something that would preempt ICC action under the principle of complementarity – strengthen the likelihood that the court will accept chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for the warrants.
Nevertheless, they added, the court recently received 26 legal opinions supporting Israel from other countries, organizations and academics, and this bolsters the chances that it will reject the warrants. The officials said they expect the court to issue its decision within days, or at most a few weeks.
Updated
Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister, has suggested that Keir Starmer, the current prime minister, and David Lammy, the UK’s foreign secretary, have “abandoned” Israel for the decision to suspend some arms sales to Israel.
Hamas is still holding many innocent Jewish hostages while Israel tries to prevent a repeat of the 7th October massacre. Why are Lammy and Starmer abandoning Israel? Do they want Hamas to win?
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) September 3, 2024
We reported in an earlier post that Rik Peeperkorn, a World Health Organization representative for the occupied Palestinian territories, said the WHO was ahead of its targets for polio vaccinations in Gaza on Tuesday.
The WHO vaccinated more than 161,000 children under 10 in the central area of Gaza in the first two days of its campaign, compared with a projection of around 150,000.
That amounts to about a quarter of the total population.
Health teams will move on to southern Gaza later this week, where they are aiming to reach some 340,000 children, he said, followed by northern Gaza.
Israel and Hamas have agreed to eight-hour daily pauses in fighting for at least three days, starting from Sunday, to facilitate the first round of vaccinations at 160 sites.
Each “humanitarian pause” is meant to last from 06:00 until 15:00 local time, with the possibility of adding an extra day if needed.
Peeperkon said that some children in southern Gaza were thought to be outside the agreed zone for the pauses and that negotiations continued in order to reach them.
The WHO says that at least 90% of Palestinian children need to be vaccinated in order for the campaign to work and to prevent the spread of polio both within Gaza and across borders.
Updated
Netanyahu describes UK suspension of some Israel arms sales as 'shameful'
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has posted a thread on social media describing the UK’s government’s decision to suspend some arms sales to Israel as “shameful”.
It came a day after the UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, announced a suspension of 30 out of 350 arms licences to Israel, saying there is a “clear risk” equipment could be used to commit serious violations of international law.
Days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages, the UK government suspended thirty arms licenses to Israel.
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) September 3, 2024
Netanyanu wrote on X:
Days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages, the UK government suspended thirty arms licenses to Israel.
This shameful decision will not change Israel’s determination to defeat Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that savagely murdered 1200 people on October 7, including 14 British citizens.
Hamas is still holding over 100 hostages, including 5 British citizens. Instead of standing with Israel, a fellow democracy defending itself against barbarism, Britain’s misguided decision will only embolden Hamas.
Israel is pursuing a just war with just means, taking unprecedented measures to keep civilians out of harm’s way and comporting fully with international law.
Just as Britain’s heroic stand against the Nazis is seen today as having been vital in defending our common civilization, so too will history judge Israel’s stand against Hamas and Iran’s axis of terror.
With or without British arms, Israel will win this war and secure our common future.
Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, said the security council will “finally” convene a meeting on Wednesday to hold an official discussion on Israeli captives for the first time since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, in which militants killed 1,200 people and abducted about 250 others.
He wrote in a post on X:
Following my urgent request, the UN security council will finally convene on Wednesday for the first time since the October 7 massacre to hold an official discussion on the hostages. It is a disgrace that it has taken the council 11 months and the brutal execution of six hostages by Hamas terrorists to finally convene this discussion.
I extend my gratitude to the representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France for calling for this meeting. The security council must unequivocally condemn this Nazi-like terrorist organization and demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.
Following my urgent request, the UN Security Council will finally convene on Wednesday for the first time since the October 7 massacre to hold an official discussion on the hostages.
— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) September 3, 2024
It is a disgrace that it has taken the Council 11 months and the brutal execution of six…
The UN security council is made up of 15 members (5 permanent: China, France, Russia, the UK and the US, and ten non-permanent members elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly: Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Switzerland). The security council can issue legally binding resolutions that can be backed up by sanctions, peacekeepers or by force of arms.
World Health Organization surpasses polio vaccination targets in Gaza children
The World Health Organization (WHO) in Gaza said it is ahead of its targets for polio vaccinations in Gaza on day three of the mass campaign aimed at preventing an outbreak in the territory.
Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territories, told reporters that it had vaccinated over 161,000 children under 10 in the central area in the first two days of its campaign versus a projected 150,000.
“Up until now things are going well,” he was quoted by Reuters as having said. “These humanitarian pauses, up until now they work. We still have ten days to go.”
The vaccinations are meant to be accompanied by three-day pauses in the fighting in several areas of the territory to allow the inoculation of more than 640,000 children. But despite this pledge, there have been reports of Israeli airstrikes killing Palestinian people in Gaza since the vaccination campaign started on Sunday.
The World Health Organization believes that 90% of children under 10 in Gaza must be immunised for the campaign to be effective.
Julian Borger is the Guardian’s world affairs editor
The mass protests in Tel Aviv over the past two nights, and the smaller ones every Saturday night for the past few months, have been almost entirely about a deal with Hamas so that Israeli hostages are freed and come home.
There is very little said at these rallies about the deaths of an estimated 41,000 plus Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October. Israelis see very little of what is going on there in their media.
Concern for Palestinians is not entirely absent however. The protests are made up of different factions and one of them, dressed in purple with purple flags on Monday night, is Standing Together, which organises joint Israeli and Palestinian action for peace.
They were chanting: “Israeli and Palestinian kids want to live”, and shouted accusations of Netanyahu’s alleged war crimes.
“Netanyahu faces the same fate as Slobodan Milošević at the Hague war crimes tribunal,” Dov Khenin, a veteran communist and former member of the Knesset (MK), told the crowd.
Unlike many demonstrators who were disappointed by Monday’s short-lived general strike, Khenin saw the fact that there was any union action at all as an important breakthrough, as political strikes are banned in Israel.
“It is very, very important to realise that there is a real struggle inside Israeli society,” Khenin told the Guardian. “It is a key to change towards a different future for Israel and Palestinians alike.”
“Netanyahu, unfortunately, has a very stable coalition with 64 out of 120 MK’s. That is very difficult to overcome. However, Netanyahu does not have the majority in Israeli public opinion,” Khenin said.
“Your [the UK] prime minister thinks that it is very important to be a friend of Israel, and sometimes believes that being a friend of Israel is also being a friend of the Israeli government,” he added.
“It is very important to realise that another Israel exists: an Israel of protest, an Israel of peace, an Israel that is totally against our current government.”
The Israeli military says it has killed a Hamas militant who appeared in a widely viewed video from the 7 October Hamas-led attacks, in which about 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel and about 250 others were taken hostage.
The military on Tuesday identified the militant as Ahmed Fozi Wadia, a commander in a Hamas commando battalion and a member of a paragliding unit. The military said aircraft struck a compound in Gaza City on Saturday where it claimed Hamas militants were operating, killing eight of them, including Wadia.
The Israeli military said Wadia flew into the community of Netiv HaAsara, in southern Israel, on a paraglider before launching the attack on civilians there in October.
In a video of the attack on the Taasa family home, Gil Taasa is seen running to a shelter with his two boys when a grenade is thrown in. Taasa jumps on the grenade and was killed, and his sons were injured. The militant, now identified by the military as Wadia, is then seen standing over the injured boys and drinking cola from their fridge, the Associated Press reported.
Updated
Israeli forces continue assault on city of Jenin for seventh consecutive day - report
Israeli forces continued their assault on the city of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, and its camp for the seventh consecutive day, resulting so far in the killing of 18 people, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported.
The military campaign across the West Bank, according to Israeli leaders, is designed to pre-empt attacks on Israelis after a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last month. Hundreds of troops backed by drones and helicopters have taken part in the assault, which has caused extensive damage to houses and infrastructure in Jenin and the densely packed refugee camp adjacent to the city.
This report is from Wafa. The claims in it have not yet been independently verified by the Guardian:
The occupation forces continue to destroy the centre of Jenin city, as the occupation bulldozers razed Cinema Street and large parts of Hospitals Street to the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital, and destroyed shops in the Cinema Roundabout area and re-razed Post Street.
The occupation bulldozers attacked a group of journalists while they were covering the destruction of Cinema Roundabout and the surrounding shops, and opened fire directly on them, which resulted in the injury of several journalists.
In Al-Jabariyat neighborhood, the occupation forces stormed the house of the detainee Zakaria Al-Zubaidi and detained his brother Yahya, after vandalizing and destroying the contents of the house.
The occupation forces also continued their large-scale detention campaigns of young men in Jenin camp and the villages of Al-Silah Al-Harithiya, Al-Yamoun and Kafr Dan west of Jenin.
Later last night, the occupation forces stormed the town of Qabatiya along with an Israeli special force. They began shooting at citizens’ homes, which resulted in a young man being shot in the chest while he was inside his home.
Updated
‘We cannot protect our children’: parents in Gaza face new threat of polio
My colleagues Malak A Tantesh and Bethan McKernan have this report on the struggles of delivering the huge polio vaccination campaign in Gaza, where much of the healthcare system has been destroyed by the Israeli military during the war:
Like so many in Gaza, Eid al-Attar, a teacher from the north of the territory, now spends his days trying to find enough food and water to keep his family alive. Displaced eight times since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October, the 42-year-old has tried his best to shield his five children from the conflict. Now the Palestinian territory is facing a new danger: the highly infectious and potentially deadly disease, polio.
“We cannot protect our children. We are exposed to death at any moment due to the constant bombardment and insecurity. And I cannot protect them from diseases either,” he said in Deir al-Balah on Sunday as a UN-led vaccination campaign got under way.
“We live in a tent, which does not protect us from anything, there are no medicines, there is garbage everywhere, and the streets are filled with wastewater.”
Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza has decimated the territory’s healthcare system, with 31 of 36 hospitals damaged or destroyed, according to the World Health Organization.
About 90% of the 2.3 million people who live in the Gaza Strip have been displaced from their homes, with the majority living in very overcrowded, unsanitary makeshift camps. Hepatitis, pneumonia and diarrheal diseases such as dysentery, as well as scabies, lice and debilitating rashes are already rife, the WHO said.
The number of deaths caused by illness of more than 40,000 casualties recorded by the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory is unclear. But one of healthcare workers’ worst fears were confirmed last week when Gaza recorded its first case of type 2 polio in a quarter century. The contagious disease can cause paralysis and death, particularly in infants and young children.
Updated
Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, criticised the government’s decision to suspend some arms sales to Israel as sending a “terrible message” in the country’s “hour of need”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said:
On the day that those beautiful people were being buried, kidnapped from a music festival like Reading or Glastonbury, the UK decides to send a signal that it’s Israel that it wants to penalise, and that is a terrible, terrible message to be sending both to Israel in its hour of need, also to Hamas about the consequences - where consequences are for the horrific actions that Hamas has taken as a terrorist organisation, but also to other allies and adversaries around the world. So it is the wrong decision taken very much at the wrong time.
The chief rabbi, meanwhile, said the government’s decision to suspend some arms licences to Israel “beggars belief”.
Ephraim Mirvis posted on social media yesterday evening, saying the announcement “feeds the falsehood that Israel is in breach of international humanitarian law”.
“Sadly, this announcement will serve to encourage our shared enemies,” he said, as he criticised the suspension announcement’s timing – coming on the same day as the funerals of six Israeli hostages killed by Hamas.
It beggars belief that the British government, a close strategic ally of Israel, has announced a partial suspension of arms licences, at a time when Israel is fighting a war for its very survival on seven fronts forced upon it on the 7th October, and at the very moment when six…
— Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis (@chiefrabbi) September 2, 2024
Hannah Bond, co-CEO of ActionAid UK, is among those who say the British government should halt all new and existing arms licenses to Israel, arguing that the UK risks being “complicit” in the daily atrocities being committed in Gaza.
In a statement, Bond said:
Now is not the time for half measures: if the UK government believes the Israeli military may be breaching international humanitarian law in Gaza, then it should go much further and halt all new and existing arms licenses to the Israeli government immediately.
Until it does, the UK remains at risk of being complicit in the atrocities taking place in Gaza daily. After 11 months of horror, it’s time for the UK to apply maximum pressure on the Israeli government to secure a permanent ceasefire and the release of the hostages – and finally put an end to this nightmare.
F35 jets 'deliberately' not included in UK's suspension of some arms sales to Israel, defence secretary says
The UK’s defence secretary, John Healey, has been asked by the BBC why components for F35 jets are not included in the suspension.
He said there was a “deliberate carve out” for the jets, of which there are about 1,000 that are used by 20 countries around the world.
“The UK makes important, critical components for all those jets that go into a global pool,” he said, adding that it’s “hard to distinguish” which components would go into Israeli jets because of this.
“This is a global supply chain, with the UK a vital part of that supply chain. We are not prepared to put at risk the operation of fighter jets that are central to our own UK security, that of our allies and of Nato.” He has rejected claims that the announcement was Labour simply making a political gesture.
'This is not about making a political gesture'
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) September 3, 2024
Defence Secretary John Healey spoke to #BBCBreakfast about criticism that suspending 30 out of 350 arms export licences for military equipment to Israel doesn't go far enoughhttps://t.co/Ylno1Osc6t pic.twitter.com/dnqQK1O1ay
Healey told Times Radio that the country’s suspension of 30 of its 350 arms export licences to Israel will not threaten Israel’s ability to defend itself.
“It will not have a material impact on Israel’s security,” he said this morning.
Healey said he informed his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, about the suspension before it was announced.
He said:
As I said to the defence minister Yoav Gallant yesterday when I spoke to him before the announcement, we have a duty to follow the law, but this does not alter our unshakable commitment to support Israel’s right to self-defence and to the defence of Israel if it comes under direct attack again, just as UK jets back in April helped intercept Iranian drones and missiles that were targeted directly at Israeli civilians.
Gallant said he was deeply disheartened by the UK’s decision, while Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said he was “disappointed” by it, adding it sent “a very problematic message” to Hamas and “its sponsors in Iran”.
Updated
UK's suspension of 30 arms export licences to Israel 'little more than window dressing', Oxfam chief says
Oxfam GB have responded to the UK suspending 30 out of 350 UK arms licenses to Israel because of a “clear risk” they may be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
The charity’s chief executive, Halima Begum, welcomed the suspension of some of the licenses but called for the British government to go further in order to reduce the high number of Palestinian civilians being killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since 7 October, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, who made the announcement, said the suspension would almost entirely exclude all UK components for the F-35 fighter jet programme, seen as a significant loophole by many as Israel is using the jets in its bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Begum, who took over as Oxfam GB chief executive in April, called for the suspension of all arms exports, saying the government’s slight shift in policy was “little more than window dressing” as Israel can still order weapons via third parties.
She said:
The government’s suspension of some weapons exports to Israel is welcome recognition of the clear risk that Israel is using UK arms in serious breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza.
But suspending just 30 licences out of 350, and crucially leaving loopholes for components in F-35 fighter jets that have been dropping 2,000-pound bombs on Palestinians for months now, is nowhere near adequate.
In the time Parliament has been in recess alone, Oxfam estimates that over 1,100 people have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military. By leaving a loophole that allows Israel to order weapons via third parties, the suspension is little more than window dressing.
Stronger, more committed action from the UK government is urgently needed, with a suspension of all arms exports and the closure of all loopholes.
Polio vaccination campaign continues in Gaza despite ongoing Israeli bombardment
As we mentioned in the opening summary, a large-scale vaccination campaign to inoculate children against the newly emerged threat of polio in the Gaza Strip has continued into its third day.
Israel has agreed to limited pauses in fighting to facilitate the campaign, according to the World Health Organization. But despite this pledge, there are reports of Israel continuing to launch airstrikes on Gaza.
A journalist from the Agence France-Presse news agency reported troops blowing up homes in Gaza City and warplanes hitting a house to the east overnight into Tuesday.
The territory’s civil defence agency said Israel carried out a deadly strike on a tent sheltering displaced people in southern Khan Younis, as well as bombarding central Gaza.
Israel said the polio vaccination programme, which is hoped to reach some 640,000 Palestinian children, would continue through 9 September and last eight hours a day.
IDF raids will see Israeli hostages return ‘in coffins’, Hamas armed wing says
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza and the wider crisis in the Middle East.
Hamas’s armed wing, al-Qassam Brigades, has said hostages would return to Israel “inside coffins” if military pressure continued, warning that new instructions were issued in June to militants guarding the captives on what to do if Israeli troops approached.
Spokesperson Abu Obeida said in a statement: “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s insistence on liberating the prisoners through military pressure instead of concluding a deal will mean that they will return to their families inside coffins.”
The announcement comes days after Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) recovered the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. According to Israel’s health ministry, they had been shot at close range about two days before their remains were discovered.
The new instructions, Obeida said, were given to guards of hostages after a rescue operation by Israel in June. At that time, Israeli forces freed four hostages in a raid in which scores of Palestinians, including women and children, were killed.
In a press conference on Monday, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Israel will not accept the massacre of six hostages, Hamas will pay a heavy price.”
Below is a summary of some of the latest developments:
The US president, Joe Biden, said that a “final” deal for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza was “very close” but that he did not think the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was doing enough to secure such an agreement. Netanyahu, in a press conference, said he did not believe that Biden made those comments.
Netanyahu insisted that Israeli forces must retain control over the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border, which has emerged as a primary sticking point in Gaza ceasefire talks. He described it as “Hamas’s oxygen pipe”.
The UK moved to immediately suspend 30 arms export licences to Israel after a review by the government found a “clear risk” that UK arms may be used in serious violation of humanitarian law relating to the treatment of Palestinian detainees and the supply of aid to Gaza.
Protests against the Israeli leader’s government suffered a blow yesterday when a court ordered an early end to a general strike. Israel’s biggest trade union, Histadrut, said hundreds of thousands of people joined its strike. Israel’s labour court ruled that the strike, which affected many businesses, schools and transport routes, had to end at 14:30 local time (12:30 BST). It was due to finish at 18:00 local time (16:00 BST).
The demonstrations were prompted by the discovery of the bodies of six hostages in Gaza, and brought tens of thousands of Israelis out on to the streets to protest against the government’s handling of the war in Gaza and efforts to release dozens of hostages who remain in captivity.
Ben Gurion international airport near Tel Aviv saw some flights delayed, and none at all for two hours leading up to 10am. Tel Aviv and the northern coastal city of Haifa heeded the strike calls, but not all municipalities slowed down or ceased their activities.
Further protests took place outside Netanyahu’s residences in Jerusalem and Caesarea.
At least 40,786 Palestinian people have been killed and 94,224 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
UN agencies and other organisations will administer polio vaccines to children under the age of 10 in central Gaza today, as the vaccination campaign continues for its third day. The health ministry said about 160,000 children received the first dose of the polio vaccine in the central governorate in the Gaza Strip on Sunday and Monday.
Updated
