Summary
That is it for today’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:
Egypt has detained several students who were trying to promote pro-Palestinian boycotts and solidarity campaigns, the latest sign that it does not want to leave space for activism over the war in Gaza despite growing official criticism of Israel.
Belgium’s Ghent University has severed ties with all Israeli universities and research institutions, as they no longer align with its human rights policy, the university said on Friday. Pro-Palestinian protesters in Ghent have been protesting against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and have been occupying parts of the university campus since early May.
Yemen’s Houthis launched a missile attack on the US aircraft carrier Eisenhower in the Red Sea in response to US-UK strikes on the Yemeni provinces of Sana’a, Hodeidah and Taiz, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a televised statement on Friday.
Israel will not agree to any halt in fighting in Gaza that is not part of a deal that includes a return of hostages, a senior Israeli security official said on Friday. The comment came after a statement from Hamas declaring that it would be ready to reach an agreement including an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, as long as Israel stopped the fighting in Gaza.
The number of people fleeing their homes because of war, violence and persecution has reached 114 million and is climbing because nations have failed to tackle the causes and combatants are refusing to comply with international law, the UN refugee chief said Thursday. Filippo Grandi criticised the UN security council, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security, for failing to use its voice to try to resolve conflicts from Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan to Congo, Myanmar and many other places.
The Israeli military says its troops have ended operations in eastern Jabaliya in the northern section of the Gaza Strip, having destroyed 10 kilometres of tunnels and several weapons production sites in days of fighting that included more than 200 airstrikes.
Spain rejects “restrictions” that Israel plans to impose on the activities of its consulate in Jerusalem in response to Madrid’s recognition of a Palestinian state, Spanish foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares, said on Friday. During an interview with radio Onda Cero, he said: “This morning we sent a ’note verbale’ to the Israeli government in which we reject any restriction on the normal activity of the Spanish consulate general in Jerusalem, as its status is guaranteed by international law.”
The state department falsified a report earlier this month to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week. Stacy Gilbert left her post as senior civil military adviser in the state department’s bureau of population, refugees and migration, on Tuesday. She had been one of the department’s subject matter experts who drafted the report mandated under national security memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and published on 10 May.
The US and UK struck 13 Houthi targets in several locations in Yemen on Thursday evening, in response to a recent surge in attacks by the Iran-backed militia group on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, US officials said.
Thank you for following along. You can find more of our coverage of the war here.
Egypt has detained several students who were trying to promote pro-Palestinian boycotts and solidarity campaigns, the latest sign that it does not want to leave space for activism over the war in Gaza despite growing official criticism of Israel.
The students are among dozens of people held in connection with protests against Israel’s military campaign, some of them detained in October when state-sanctioned rallies spilled over to unauthorised sites including Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Analysts say Egyptian authorities fear that demonstrations over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could fuel domestic political dissent, which has been suppressed in a broad crackdown lasting more than a decade.
According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), an independent Cairo-based group, at least 125 people have been arrested since the Gaza war began in October, 95 of whom are still being held in pre-trial detention on charges including membership of a banned group or spreading false news.
Three students were arrested earlier this month over their attempt to create a group called Students for Palestine, according to Nabeh El Ganadi, a human rights lawyer who represents two of the students. They include Ziad Bassiouny, a 22-year-old student at an arts institute in Giza.
About 40 members of the security forces were deployed to arrest Bassiouny at his apartment in the early hours of 9 May, his mother, Fayza Hendawy, told Reuters.
“They pointed their rifles at us so that none of us could move,” she said, describing the overnight raid.
The students “did not call for protests or anything like that”, she said. “It’s not a political group, they’re just students calling on Egyptian students to stand with Palestine and show their support publicly like the rest of the universities globally.”
Egypt’s state information service did not respond to a Reuters request for comment, and an interior ministry official could not immediately be reached.
