Summary of the day …
The vast amount of rubble including unexploded ordnance left by Israel’s devastating war in the Gaza Strip could take about 14 years to remove, a United Nations official said on Friday. Pehr Lodhammar, senior officer at the UN mine action service (Unmas), told a briefing in Geneva that the war had left an estimated 37 million tons of debris in the widely urbanised, densely populated territory.
Egypt sent a high-level delegation to Israel on Friday with the hope of brokering a ceasefire agreement with Hamas in Gaza. Egypt’s top intelligence official, Abbas Kamel, is said to be leading the delegation. Israeli media has reported the outline of a deal is for Israel to undertake to stop all preparations for entering Rafah, the release of all the Israeli abductees by Hamas in two stages with time intervals of 10 weeks in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel, and a full ceasefire from both sides for a year.
A premature Palestinian infant, rescued from her mother’s womb by an emergency caesarean section shortly after the woman was killed by an Israeli airstrike, has died, her uncle said Friday. Rami al-Sheikh said Sabreen Jouda died in a Gaza hospital on Thursday after her health deteriorated and medical teams were unable to save her. The baby’s home in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was hit by an Israeli airstrike shortly before midnight Saturday. Her parents and 4-year-old sister were all killed.
At least 34,356 Palestinians have been killed and 77,368 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Israel’s military has issued a statement claiming it has foiled a terror attack after detaining two suspects near a farm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Hezbollah claims that it attacked an Israeli military convoy with anti-tank missiles and artillery shells, and that it destroyed two vehicles. Israel’s military have not commented on claims about the destruction of vehicles, but said “an Israeli civilian doing infrastructure work was injured and he was later pronounced dead.”
Two people have been arrested while protesting outside the home of Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz. They were demanding he step down from government over the failure of Israel to secure a release of hostages held by Hamas.
In another demonstration against Israel’s military campaign, a delegation of American and Israeli rabbis from Rabbis for Ceasefire marched towards the Erez crossing from Israel to the Gaza Strip with food aid for Gaza civilians, calling for a permanent ceasefire.
Students have blocked access to Paris’ Sciences Po university in a protest over the war in Gaza, demanding the institution condemn Israel’s actions. The demonstration has echos of student protests taking place in the US, where multiple arrests of students have been made on a number of campuses. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said campus protests were part of democracy, but criticised their “silence” over the Hamas. A pro-Palestinian camp has also been set up outside the Scottish parliament building in Edinburgh.
Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum report for the Guardian from Jerusalem:
The arrest and interrogation of a leading Palestinian legal scholar based at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem marks a new threat to civil liberties in Israel, her legal team and employer have said.
Prof Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was detained by police on the afternoon of 17 April over comments made on a podcast more than a month earlier and held overnight in conditions her lawyers described as “terrible” and designed to humiliate.
“This case is unique,” said Hassan Jabareen, her lawyer and the director of the human rights organisation Adalah. “This is not only about one professor, it could be a [precedent] for any academic who goes against the consensus in wartime.”
Shalhoub-Kevorkian was released on bail the next day when a magistrate and a district court judge both ruled she did not pose a threat, but has been called for further questioning on Sunday.
Although there have been widespread detentions of Palestinian citizens of Israel who publicly criticised the war in Gaza, this is the first time an academic has been targeted over speech related to their work.
Read more of Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum’s report here: ‘Political arrest’ of Palestinian academic in Israel is civil liberties threat, say lawyers
