Closing summary
It is has just gone 6pm 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:
Accumulating garbage and sewage across the Gaza Strip, combined with hot temperatures and a lack of clean water are accelarating the spread of diseases, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa) has warned. “The stench in Gaza is enough to make you kind of immediately nauseous,” Sam Rose, a director at Unrwa told the Associated Press. Hepatitis A cases are rising and doctors fear a cholera outbreak is likely.
Israeli forces deepened their incursion into two northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip on Friday, and Palestinian health officials said tank shelling in Rafah killed at least 11 people. Residents and Hamas media said tanks advanced further west into the Shakoush neighbourhood of Rafah, forcing thousands of displaced people there to leave their tent camps and head northward to the nearby Khan Younis.
The Israeli military confirmed that it is operating in Gaza City’s Shijaiyah neighbourhood after receiving intelligence that, it says, signalled the presence of “terrorists and terrorist infrastructure”. In an update on Telegram, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said dozens of Hamas sites were struck from the air. On Thursday, the Israeli military had ordered new evacuations from Gaza City neighbourhoods and AP reported that Shijaiyah residents in a messaging group shared video showing large numbers of people fleeing the area on foot with their belongings in their arms.
First responders with Gaza’s Civil Defence said airstrikes hit five homes in Shijaiyah, killing at least three people and injuring another six. It said rescuers were still digging through the rubble for survivors. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said the number killed in Shijaiyah by Israeli strikes was at least seven.
The IDF also said it had conducted several strikes in the northern Gaza Strip and said “dozens of terrorists who were hiding in Unrwa schools and facilities were eliminated”. According to its statement, the IDF said that a fighter jet struck a Hamas operative in a building in central Gaza’s Deir al Balah, within the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone”. The Israeli military said that ahead of the strike, it worked to evacuate the civilian population from the area of the building.
Israeli soldiers have destroyed 11 homes and other structures in an isolated community in the occupied West Bank, leaving 50 people homeless, amid a reported uptick in house demolitions and spiralling violence in the Palestinian territory. Contractors with bulldozers accompanied by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops arrived in Umm al-Kheir, a village mostly home to shepherds, on Wednesday morning and the demolition resulted in destroying about a third of the village’s infrastructure.
Israeli authorities said that 68 people – 19 sick or injured children plus their companions – had been allowed out of the Gaza Strip and into Egypt in the first medical evacuation since early May, when the territory’s sole travel crossing was shut down after Israel captured it. At a press conference at Nasser hospital on Thursday, Dr Mohammed Zaqout said the cases included in Thursday’s evacuation are “a drop in the ocean” and that the complicated route through Kerem Shalom and into Egypt cannot serve as an alternative to the Rafah crossing.
Polls in Iran opened on Friday for a presidential election after the death of ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month. About 61 million Iranians are eligible to vote in the polls where reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, 69, hopes for a breakthrough win against a divided conservative camp. Early projections of the results are expected by Saturday morning and official results by Sunday.
An Israeli airstrike struck the headquarters of the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service in the al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza overnight to Friday, killing three members, the rescue service said. In Rafah in the south, medics said four Palestinians were killed by tank shells that landed in the city’s west, where the Israeli army deepened its incursion in recent days. There was no Israeli immediate comment on the two incidents.
Israel’s hard-line finance minister said the government would promote West Bank settlements and punitive measures against the Palestinian Authority in response to Palestinian moves against Israel on the international stage. Bezalel Smotrich, who heads a pro-settler party, said the government supported his proposal. Netanyahu’s office, which usually announces cabinet-level decisions, did not issue any statements and was not reachable for immediate comment, Reuters reported.
A senior Palestinian official rejected on Friday Smotrich’s move, saying it was aimed at pursuing a “war of genocide” against Palestinians. Asked about Smotrich’s statement, which was not confirmed by the government, Wasel Abu Youssef, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said the settlements were “illegal colonies that violate all international resolutions”.
Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men blocked a major highway in central Israel for two hours to protest a recent supreme court decision ordering young religious men to enlist for military service. Protesters sat on the highway and lay on the ground as police lifted them up and dragged them away on Thursday. The supreme court this week ordered the Israeli government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men, saying the system of exemptions is unequal.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) welcomed the evacuation of a number of patients out of Gaza, but said that more than 10,000 patients still need medical evacuations.
The amphibious assault ship USS Wasp entered the eastern Mediterranean Sea this week as the US positions warships to try to keep fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon from escalating into a wider war in the Middle East. While the Wasp has the capability to assist in the evacuation of civilians if full-scale war breaks out between Israel and Hezbollah along the Lebanon border, that’s not the primary reason it was rotated in, a US official said, adding: “It’s about deterrence.”
A group of prominent Israelis – including a former prime minister and an ex-head of the Mossad, the foreign intelligence service – have added their voices to the growing domestic calls in the US for Congress to withdraw its invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address it next month, calling the move “a terrible mistake”. The plea, in an op-ed article in the New York Times, argues that the invitation rewards Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, for “scandalous and destructive conduct”.
Israel’s top Arab MP, Ahmad Tibi, said in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP), that Arab citizens in Israel were “hunted” over support for Gaza. “After 7 October, hundreds of Arab citizens were hunted down, chased by the Israeli police for writing a post or a story empathising with the children of Gaza or saying no to the war,” said Tibi, the 65-year-old leader of an Arab-majority political party in Israel. “It was, and still is, tough days for Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
A trio of rights groups took the Dutch government back to court on Friday, arguing that a ban on supplying F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel is not being respected in practice. In a landmark verdict in February, an appeals court ordered the Netherlands to stop delivering parts for fighter jets used by Israel in its offensive in the Gaza Strip. The court said at the time there was a “clear risk” the planes would be involved in breaking international humanitarian law.
More than 625,000 children in Gaza have been out of school for longer than 8 months, according to Unrwa. Posting on X, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said that 300,000 of the 625,000 children were Unrwa students before the Israel-Gaza war.
A ship’s captain reported that five missiles had landed close to his vessel in the Red Sea, 150 nautical miles (172 miles) northwest of the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) monitor said on Friday. The UKMTO said the ship had reported no damage and was heading northward. It gave no information on the ship or its cargo.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has announced fresh sanctions against Iran’s petroleum sector in response to what he described as an expansion of the country’s nuclear programme which has provoked renewed fears that it is preparing to build an atomic bomb. The embargos – on three unnamed entities involved in the transport of Iranian petroleum or petrochemical products – were announced amid a chorus of warnings of a renewed conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iran’s proxy Hezbollah.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) expressed its concern over the halting of 18 ambulances in the Gaza Strip due to fuel shortages. In a post on X shared on Thursday, the PRCS said the 18 ambulances represents 36% of the PRCS’s ambulance fleet capacity. In its social media post, the humanitarian organisation said it had not received its daily share of petrol from Unrwa for approximately eight days.
Updated
The amphibious assault ship USS Wasp entered the eastern Mediterranean Sea this week as the US positions warships to try to keep fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon from escalating into a wider war in the Middle East, reports the Associated Press (AP).
While the Wasp has the capability to assist in the evacuation of civilians if full-scale war breaks out between Israel and Hezbollah along the Lebanon border, that’s not the primary reason it was rotated in, a US official said. “It’s about deterrence,” the official told the AP.
A second US official said the rotation is similar to how the US sent the USS Bataan assault ship into the waters around Israel shortly after Hamas’s 7 October attack on the country, with the vessel remaining for months in the eastern Mediterranean to help provide options and try to contain the conflict. The officials spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operational details.
US European Command, which oversees US military operations in Europe and parts of the Middle East, announced the move this week, saying the Wasp and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard would sail with the dock landing ship USS Oak Hill, which is used to transport Marines, landing craft, vehicles and cargo. The Oak Hill is already in the Mediterranean.
The Wasp also is sailing with the amphibious transport dock ship USS New York, which can deliver troops either by on-deck helicopters or landing vessels.
The Israeli army said last week that it has “approved and validated” plans for an offensive in Lebanon, although any decision would come from the country’s political leaders.
Gen CQ Brown, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said on Sunday that any Israeli military offensive into Lebanon would risk an Iranian response in defense of Hezbollah, triggering a broader war that could put US forces in the region in danger.
According to the AP, the US military also has shifted other ships in the region. The Pentagon said the aircraft carrier Eisenhower, based in Norfolk, Virginia, is returning home after a deployment of more than eight months countering strikes from Yemen’s Houthi rebels on commercial shipping in the Red Sea that the Navy says is its most intense mission since the second world war. The San Diego-based USS Theodore Roosevelt will take the Eisenhower’s place.
