Closing summary
It is 5.30pm 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.
A senior Hamas official has said the group does not know how many of the Israeli hostages it is holding in Gaza are still alive, as Israeli and Hamas sources set out positions that could undermine the possibility of any imminent ceasefire deal. The Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan said in an interview with CNN that “no one has any idea” how many of the remaining 120 hostages captured on 7 October last year were still alive, amid Israeli estimates that at least a third had died in captivity or were killed when seized.
Hamdan also told CNN that the latest US-backed proposal did not meet Hamas’s demands, with a key concern being the duration of a ceasefire. Hamas wants written guarantees from the US for a permanent ceasefire, plus a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, in order to sign off on the truce proposal, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters earlier this week.
At the G7 summit, US president, Joe Biden, called Hamas “the biggest hang-up so far” to a deal on a Gaza truce and hostage release. “I’ve laid out an approach that has been endorsed by the UN security council, by the G7, by the Israelis, and the biggest hang-up so far is Hamas refusing to sign on even though they have submitted something similar,” he told reporters. “Whether or not that comes to fruition remains to be seen,” he said.
Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Friday as truce talks with Hamas militants failed to progress and tensions surged on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), witnesses reported the strikes in various parts of the Gaza Strip in the morning, particularly the centre.
AFP reported that at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, men gathered over the body of an 11-year-old boy who died during bombardment of nearby Bureij refugee camp. Israel’s military on Friday said troops continued operations in central Gaza, where warplanes had struck a militant cell and “military structure” in the Zeitun area. After projectiles were fired from northern Gaza into southern Israel on Thursday night, artillery and aircraft hit the launch sites, the army said.
Plumes of smoke were still billowing on Friday over the south Lebanon village of Jannata after a deadly Israeli strike that, officials said, killed two civilians. The village’s deputy mayor, Hassan Shur, told AFP that two women were killed and rescuers said at least nine people were injured in the strike, including an infant and two children.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel “will not be a party to the trilateral framework proposed by France”, reported the Times of Israel. Gallant’s statement came after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday that France, the US and Israel would work together to ease tensions with Hezbollah on the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israeli emergency services reported dealing with a string of fires in northern Israel on Friday after dozens of missiles were fired from southern Lebanon into the area around the border town of Kiryat Shemona. The military said that warning sirens had sounded in northern Israel and emergency services said teams were searching the area where they reported there was property damage but no casualties.
More than 37,266 Palestinians have been killed and 85,102 have been injured in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
On Friday, the Israeli military said fighter jets and anti-aircraft systems had intercepted 11 of the 16 drones launched by Hezbollah against Israel in the past 72 hours.“The Israeli air force is continuing to operate at all times to thwart terrorist activities and protect Israel’s skies from any threat,” it said in a statement.
The UN’s relief agency for Palestinians, the largest aid organisation operating in Gaza, has said Israeli authorities are frequently preventing it from delivering aid and hampering its operations in the territory. “We are getting very few positive responses to our requests for aid delivery and permits to move around Gaza,” said Tamara Alrifai, the director of external relations for Unrwa.
In the north of the Gaza Strip where Palestinians have been hit hardest by hunger, residents say they are surviving on bread alone due to acute shortages of vegetables, fruit and meat. In social media posts, Palestinians accused merchants of exploiting needs by buying goods at regular prices in Israel and the West Bank and then selling them at a huge mark-up.
Fuel shortages are pushing hospitals in Gaza to the “brink of collapse”, with people facing dehydration, disease and starvation, the charity ActionAid warned. Dr Mohammad Salha, acting director of al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza, told ActionAid that for “more than 50 days the hospital is without fuel and medical supplies and the fuel that they are bringing is only [enough] for two weeks”. Medical sources have also warned that the only oxygen station in the Gaza City area is at risk of being shut off due to a lack of fuel.
The G7 leaders warned Iran on Friday about advancing its nuclear enrichment programme and said they would be ready to enforce new measures if Tehran were to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia, according to a draft communique. “We urge Tehran to cease and reverse nuclear escalations, and stop the continuing uranium enrichment activities that have no credible civilian justifications,” the statement seen by Reuters said.
The US is to impose sanctions on an Israeli group that blocked aid convoys to Gaza, Reuters reported. The news agency attributed the information to the US news website Axios, which had cited two US officials.
The University of Sydney ordered students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza to leave an encampment which has been on the campus since April. A university spokesperson said on Friday that it had told the encampment’s leadership “we require them to vacate the encampment to allow other students to use the space”.
An Israeli court confirmed and extended for 35 days the government’s shutdown of Qatar-based television news channel Al Jazeera, the justice ministry said on Friday. Communications minister Shlomo Karhi reacted in a statement, calling Al Jazeera “a mouthpiece for terrorism in the service of Hamas”.
Updated
Plumes of smoke were still billowing on Friday over the south Lebanon village of Jannata after a deadly Israeli strike as shopkeepers swept shattered glass and vowed to stay put despite soaring cross-border violence, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Officials said two civilians were killed in an overnight strike.
“We were sitting on the balcony at night, and we felt a rocket fly over our heads. Then the world started to shake,” resident Khadija Husseini told AFP. Officials said two civilians were killed in an overnight strike.
On Friday morning, she found that her clothing store had been damaged in the strike which targeted a building about 200 metres (650 feet) away. “There was shattered glass everywhere” from the shop window, she told AFP.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said a building was hit in Jannata, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Israeli border.
The village’s deputy mayor, Hassan Shur, told AFP that two civilians, both women, were killed in a nearby building.
Rescuers said at least nine people were injured in the strike on Jannata, including an infant and two children.
An AFP photographer said a three-storey building had been completely destroyed. Residents said the targeted building was uninhabited, but housed a wood warehouse that had caught fire, with plumes of smoke still emanating from the wreckage on Friday.
Reuters reports that the US is to impose sanctions on an Israeli group that blocked aid convoys to Gaza. The news agency attributes the report to the US news website Axios, which has cited two US officials.
More details soon …
Israel 'will not be a party' to trilateral framework proposed by France, says defence minister
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has said that Israel “will not be a party to the trilateral framework proposed by France”, reports the Times of Israel.
In a news story, published on Friday, the Times of Israel cites a statement by Gallant in which he has written:
As we fight a just war, defending our people, France has adopted hostile policies against Israel. In doing so, France ignores the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli children, women and men.
Israel will not be a party to the trilateral framework proposed by France.”
Gallant’s statement comes after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday that France, the US and Israel would work together to ease tensions with Hezbollah on the Israel-Lebanon border.
“We will do the same with the Lebanese authorities,” Macron added, speaking at a summit of the G7 democratic group of countries.
Updated
More than 37,266 Palestinians have been killed and 85,102 have been injured in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
Television footage on Friday showed damaged buildings and cars as well as brush fires in several locations caused by strikes fired from southern Lebanon into the area around the border town of Kiryat Shemona, Reuters reports. It adds that falling debris amid heatwave conditions have also caused brush fires.
The Israeli military has exchanged regular fire with Hezbollah forces across the border in southern Lebanon ever since the start of the war in Gaza in October.
Neither side has appeared to wish a wider conflict, but there has been growing worry that the steady intensification of strikes could push the situation out of control with the risk of a wider conflict in a region that has already seen direct exchanges between Israel and Iran.
Reuters reports that the latest salvo came after an Israeli strike killed a senior commander from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, drawing the heaviest bombardment of northern Israel since the start of the war in October last year.
According to Reuters, tens of thousands of residents have been evacuated from their homes on both sides of the border, creating growing pressure to resolve the standoff, but diplomatic efforts have so far proved fruitless.
On Friday, the Israeli military said fighter jets and anti-aircraft systems had intercepted 11 of the 16 drones launched by Hezbollah against Israel in the past 72 hours.
“The Israeli air force is continuing to operate at all times to thwart terrorist activities and protect Israel’s skies from any threat,” it said in a statement.
Updated
Israel hits Gaza as tensions surge on Lebanon border
Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Friday as truce talks with Hamas militants failed to progress and tensions surged on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
According to the news agency, witnesses reported the strikes in various parts of the Gaza Strip in the morning, particularly the centre.
AFP reports that at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, men gathered over the body of an 11-year-old boy who died during bombardment of nearby Bureij refugee camp.
Israel’s military on Friday said troops continued operations in central Gaza, where warplanes had struck a militant cell and “military structure” in the Zeitun area.
After projectiles were fired from northern Gaza into southern Israel on Thursday night, artillery and aircraft hit the launch sites, the army said.
Fears of a broader Middle East conflict have surged again, with Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters, who are backed by Iran, launching waves of rockets against Israeli military targets on Wednesday and Thursday.
AFP reports that Hezbollah said the strikes were retaliation for the Israeli killing of one of its commanders.
Sirens sounded on Friday morning in northern Israel, where police said munitions had fallen in the Kiryat Shmona area, with no immediate sign of victims.
Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem has a news report on the CNN interview with a senior Hamas official which we mentioned earlier in the blog (see 08.54 BST):
A senior Hamas official has said the group does not know how many of the Israeli hostages it is holding in Gaza are still alive, as Israeli and Hamas sources set out positions that could undermine the possibility of any imminent ceasefire deal.
The Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan said in an interview with CNN that “no one has any idea” how many of the remaining 120 hostages captured on 7 October last year were still alive, amid Israeli estimates that at least a third had died in captivity or were killed when seized.
Reiterating Hamas’s position on the US-supported ceasefire proposal, now backed by a UN security council resolution, he said the group “needed a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves”. He also referred to the need for reconstruction and the end of the years-long Israeli blockade of Gaza, adding: “[Then] we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”
Hamdan’s comments are the clearest public signalling of Hamas’s position that has remained largely unchanged in recent unsuccessful negotiations: that its agreement is preconditioned on Israel agreeing to end the conflict and withdraw its troops from Gaza.
On their part Israeli officials have said they see Hamas’s response – despite a previous statement that it was “positive” about a proposed ceasefire – as representing a rejection of the proposed deal that would have exchanged hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
While Joe Biden called Hamas the “biggest hang-up” to another truce, there has been little evidence in the days since the security council vote that either the Israeli government or Hamas are interested in compromising on a meaningful ceasefire, with Israeli officials indicating they see any agreement as time limited and allowing Israel to return to its offensive against Hamas.
In the north of the Gaza Strip where Palestinians have been hit hardest by hunger, residents say they are surviving on bread alone due to acute shortages of vegetables, fruit and meat.
Reuters reports that food that can be found in markets is being sold at exorbitant prices: a kilo of green peppers, which cost about a dollar before the war, was priced at 320 shekels or nearly $90. Traders demanded $70 for just a kilo of onions.
Um Mohammed, a mother of six in Gaza City, told the news agency:
We are being starved, the world has forgotten about us.
Except for the flour, bread, we have nothing else, we don’t have anything to eat it with, so we eat bread only.
In social media posts, Palestinians accused unscrupulous merchants of exploiting needs by buying goods at regular prices in Israel and the West Bank and selling them at a huge mark-up. They said traders are taking advantage of a breakdown of policing in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Updated
Fuel shortages are pushing hospitals in Gaza to the 'brink of collapse', warns charity
Fuel shortages are pushing hospitals in Gaza to the “brink of collapse”, with people facing dehydration, disease and starvation, the charity ActionAid has warned.
Dr Mohammad Salha, acting director of al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza, said a lot of services at the hospital were affected by the lack of fuel. In a voice note message, he told ActionAid:
The [World Health Organization] [was] providing fuel and medical supplies and medication.[But] from 22 April [until] now they are not providing because the Israeli [military] refused to [let] the fuel and medical supplies [enter]. So, [for] more than 50 days the hospital is without fuel and medical supplies and the fuel that they are bringing is only [enough] for two weeks.
[As a result] we are decreasing our intervention and we are not running the big generators. We are running the small generators only to recharge the batteries. And [on this] we are doing the surgeries related to life saving.”
Salha said a lot of services, including the hospital’s maternity and gynaecology services, had been affected by the lack of fuel. He described the hospital’s operating theatre as “not running at the full capacity”.
Our laboratory is also affected. We can’t do many analyses, related to orthopedic analysis [and] we are dealing with many patients … 70% of people who [are] affected from the Israeli aggression need orthopedic surgery.”
ActionAid report that only 17 of Gaza’s hospitals are now partially functioning, and the Palestinian ministry of health has warned these could go out of service if they do not receive more fuel immediately. The charity
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, medical sources have warned that the only oxygen station in the Gaza City area is at risk of being shut off due to a lack of fuel.
Riham Jafari, advocacy and communications coordinator at ActionAid Palestine said:
Fuel is absolutely crucial to keep the infrastructure needed to sustain life operational in Gaza. It is shocking that hospitals are having to reduce their services due to shortages and that life-saving equipment could be forced out of action.
The trickle of aid currently entering Gaza is nowhere near enough to meet the enormous and ever-growing humanitarian need.
We demand that the Rafah crossing is reopened immediately, that more aid and fuel is permitted to enter Gaza unhindered and that the safety of humanitarian workers distributing aid is guaranteed. We continue to urge all parties to agree to a permanent ceasefire now.”
Updated
G7 warns Iran over continuing nuclear programme escalation
The G7 leaders warned Iran on Friday about advancing its nuclear enrichment programme and said they would be ready to enforce new measures if Tehran were to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia, according to a draft communique reported by Reuters.
“We urge Tehran to cease and reverse nuclear escalations, and stop the continuing uranium enrichment activities that have no credible civilian justifications,” the statement seen by Reuters said.
Missile barrage fired from southern Lebanon hits northern Israel, emergency services report
Israeli emergency services reported dealing with a string of fires in northern Israel on Friday after dozens of missiles were fired from southern Lebanon into the area around the border town of Kiryat Shemona.
According to Reuters, the military said that warning sirens had sounded in northern Israel and emergency services said teams were searching the area where they reported there was property damage but no casualties.
Updated
Unrwa accuses Israel of frequently preventing aid deliveries to Gaza
The UN’s relief agency for Palestinians, the largest aid organisation operating in Gaza, has said Israeli authorities are frequently preventing it from delivering aid and hampering its operations in the territory.
“We are getting very few positive responses to our requests for aid delivery and permits to move around Gaza,” said Tamara Alrifai, the director of external relations for Unrwa.
Alrifai said the organisation maintained contact with Cogat, the Israeli body that oversees the Palestinian territories and coordinates with aid groups, but “this contact doesn’t always bring positive results – as we can see, from the obstructions to delivery, to our ability to receive [aid] trucks”.
“At the end of the day it’s about the volume of aid that comes in & whether it’s sufficient to feed, support, & give medical services to over 2 million people. The answer is no, it is very much insufficient,” @UNRWA @TamaraAlrifai to @guardian about #Gazahttps://t.co/DFriauUTc2
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) June 13, 2024
Israel has accused some of Unrwa’s employees of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attack and of being members of terrorist organisations. In April an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna concluded Israel had yet to provide evidence for the membership claim.
Attacks on the UN and Unrwa by Israeli officials predate the current war in Gaza but have intensified since October. Israel officials said in March that they would “no longer work with Unrwa”, although contact continued. Last month the Israeli ambassador to the UN said the entire organisation had become “a terrorist entity”.
A Cogat spokesperson said the organisation had daily communications with Unrwa, before repeating accusations about the organisation’s relationship with Hamas.
Alrifai pointed to a slow response by the Israeli authorities after an attack by settlers on the Unrwa compound in East Jerusalem, and increasing visa restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on its staff, including the commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini, as evidence that its operations were being hampered.
You can read the full piece by Ruth Michaelson and Kaamil Ahmed here:
University of Sydney orders students protesting in support of Gaza to leave after almost two months
The University of Sydney has ordered students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza to leave an encampment which has been on the campus since April, reports the Australian Associated Press (AAP).
A university spokesperson said on Friday that it had told the encampment’s leadership “we require them to vacate the encampment to allow other students to use the space”.
The spokesperson said in a statement that the front lawns are a shared space and “our shared spaces should be welcoming and inclusive to all members of our community”. The shared space had been taken over by the encapment “to the exclusion of others”, they added.
The order comes after mounting tensions at the prestigious university between students at the pro-Palestine camp and university management.
According to the AAP, the University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott in May apologised to students and staff who felt unsafe around the encampment but stopped short of ordering them to disband.
Several Australian universities have recently ramped up action against pro-Palestine protesters who refuse to disband encampments with Melbourne’s La Trobe University starting misconduct proceedings against students.
Meanwhile, camps at the University of Melbourne and western Australia’s Curtin University disbanded last month after concessions from management.
The University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council was contacted by the AAP for comment.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images on the newswires:
An Israeli court has confirmed and extended for 35 days the government’s shutdown of Qatar-based television news channel Al Jazeera, the justice ministry said on Friday, according to Reuters.
Al Jazeera, which broadcasts in Arabic and English, went off the air in Israel under an initial 45-day order early last month.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has had a long-running feud with Al Jazeera that has worsened over recent months.
“The Tel Aviv district court confirmed the communications minister’s instructions to stop Al Jazeera channel broadcasts, close its bureaus in Israel, block access to its websites and seize the equipment,” the justice ministry said.
The order, issued Thursday after a prosecutor’s request for its confirmation and extension, was for an additional 35 days, the ministry said on its website.
Reuters reports that the shutdown does not affect broadcasts from the Israeli-occupied West Bank or the Gaza Strip, from which Al Jazeera still covers Israel’s war with Hamas.
Communications minister Shlomo Karhi reacted in a statement, calling Al Jazeera “a mouthpiece for terrorism in the service of Hamas”.
“For absurd legal reasons, we are forced [to request] its closure in Israel every 45 days. We will continue to do whatever is necessary to cleanse the region of terrorism and incitement to violence”, he added.
In January, Israel said an Al Jazeera staff journalist and a freelancer killed in an airstrike in Gaza were “terror operatives”.
The following month, another journalist with the channel who was injured in a separate strike was accused of being a “deputy company commander” with Hamas.
Al Jazeera denied the allegations.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) had called for a reversal of the ban. The UN, US and Germany also opposed it.
Updated
Israeli tanks advance in Rafah as fleeing Palestinians ‘face death and starvation’
Israeli tanks rolled into the western part of Rafah on Thursday as the city came under intense helicopter, drone and artillery fire in what residents described as one of the worst bombardments of the area so far.
The assault on Rafah has driven out more than a million Palestinians who had been sheltering there, forcing them into areas with little or no access to food, water or shelter. The UN has warned that more than a million people are expected to “face death and starvation by the middle of July”.
Joe Biden had warned he would cut off the supply of US weapons if Israel went ahead with an attack on Rafah, in part because of the lack of an adequate humanitarian plan for all the civilians who would be displaced, but the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his war cabinet launched the attack anyway over a month ago.
The Biden administration has yet to slow the flow of arms in response, arguing that Israel had yet to carry out “major operations”.
People living in Rafah described the level of fighting as devastating, however.
“There was very intense fire from warplanes, Apaches [helicopters] and quadcopters, in addition to Israeli artillery and military battleships, all of which were striking the area west of Rafah,” a resident told Agence France-Presse.
Hamas said its fighters were battling Israeli troops on the streets of the city, which lies on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
You can read the full report by Julian Borger here:
Updated
Senior Hamas official says 'no-one has an idea' how many hostages in Gaza are alive
A senior Hamas official has said that “no one has an idea” how many of the 120 remaining hostages in Gaza are alive. The comment was made in an interview with CNN.
In the interview with CNN, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan said:“I don’t have any idea about that. No one has an idea about this.” CNN reports that he alleged – without providing any evidence – that the Israeli operation to free four hostages on Saturday resulted in the deaths of three others, including a US citizen.
Hamdan was asked about the testimony of a doctor who treated the released hostages, in which it was reported that they had suffered mental and physical abuse and were beaten every hour. He replied:
I believe if they have mental problem, this is because of what Israel have done in Gaza. Because [no one can] handle what Israel is doing, bombing each day, killing civilians, killing women and children … they saw that [with] their own eyes.”
Hamdan said that any deal to release the hostages held in Gaza would need to include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Hamdan also told CNN that the latest US-backed proposal did not meet Hamas’s demands, with a key concern being the duration of a ceasefire. Hamas wants written guarantees from the US for a permanent ceasefire, plus a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, in order to sign off on the truce proposal, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters earlier this week.
Hamdan also refuted reports that Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, suggested the deaths of thousands of Palestinians were “necessary sacrifices”. Hamdan told CNN the messages, reported by the Wall Street Journal, “were fake.”
According to CNN’s report, “Hamdan repeatedly deflected any questions about Hamas’s role in the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza” and called the 7 October attacks, which sparked the current war in Gaza, “a reaction against the occupation”.
Updated
Opening summary
It has gone 10.30am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.
A senior Hamas official has told CNN that “no one has an idea” how many of the 120 remaining hostages in Gaza are alive. He added that any deal to release them would need to include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
In the interview with CNN, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan said the latest US-backed proposal did not meet Hamas’s demands, with a key concern being the duration of a ceasefire.
Hamdan also refuted reports that Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, suggested the deaths of thousands of Palestinians were “necessary sacrifices”. Hamdan told CNN the messages “were fake.”
According to CNN’s report, “Hamdan repeatedly deflected any questions about Hamas’s role in the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza” and called the 7 October attacks, which sparked the current war in Gaza, “a reaction against the occupation.”
More on that in a moment but first, here is a summary of the latest developments:
Israeli tanks rolled into the western part of Rafah on Thursday as the city came under intense helicopter, drone and artillery fire in what residents described as one of the worst bombardments of the area so far. The assault on Rafah has driven out more than a million Palestinians who had been sheltering there, forcing them into areas with little or no access to food, water or shelter. The UN has warned that more than a million people are expected to “face death and starvation by the middle of July”.
Missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck the Palau-flagged Verbena cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday, sparking a fire and severely injuring one of her crew, US Central Command said.
The UN’s relief agency for Palestinians, the largest aid organisation operating in Gaza, has said Israeli authorities are frequently preventing it from delivering aid and hampering its operations in the territory. “We are getting very few positive responses to our requests for aid delivery and permits to move around Gaza,” said Tamara Alrifai, the director of external relations for Unrwa.
G7 Leaders, who are meeting at the summit in Italy, have released a draft statement on the Israel-Gaza war. Part of the draft statement reads: “We are concerned about the consequences of the ongoing ground operations in Rafah on the civilian population and the possibility of a large-scale military offensive that would have further disastrous consequences on civilians. We call on the government of Israel to refrain from such an offensive, in line with its obligations under international law.”
At the G7 summit, US president, Joe Biden, called Hamas “the biggest hang-up so far” to a deal on a Gaza truce and hostage release. “I’ve laid out an approach that has been endorsed by the UN security council, by the G7, by the Israelis, and the biggest hang-up so far is Hamas refusing to sign on even though they have submitted something similar,” he told reporters. “Whether or not that comes to fruition remains to be seen,” he said.
Support for armed struggle as the best means to end Israeli occupation and achieve statehood rose among Palestinians while backing for the militant group Hamas also increased slightly in the last three months, according to an opinion poll. The poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) showed support for armed struggle climbed by 8 percentage points to 54% of those surveyed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has launched its biggest salvo of rockets at Israel since the war in Gaza began in retaliation for the killing of a senior field commander, bringing the two sides closer to all-out conflict. An Israeli airstrike on the village of Jouaiya in southern Lebanon late on Tuesday night killed three Hezbollah operatives as well as Taleb Abdallah, the most senior commander to be killed since hostilities began eight months ago.
The US, France and Israel have agreed to work together to step up efforts to push forward a roadmap presented by Paris earlier this year to defuse tensions between Hezbollah and Israel, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday.
The heads of six UN agencies and three international humanitarian organisations issued a joint appeal Thursday to Yemen’s Houthi rebels for the immediate release of 17 members of their staff who were recently detained along with many others also being held by the Iranian-backed group. The Houthis said Monday they had arrested members of an “American-Israeli spy network,” days after detaining the staffers from the U.N. and aid organisations.
Updated
