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October 7, 2023: Israel begins bombarding Gaza in retaliation to Hamas attacks
Israel resumes massive attacks on March 18, killing over 400 in a day — two months after ceasefire ending 15 months of relentless attacks began
Future governance of Gaza remains unclear as Trump suggests US takeover but Arab countries propose alternative plan, which UK, others back
Hamas and Israel exchange 25 hostages, bodies and 1,700 detainees in seven swaps
Over 50,000 Palestinians, 400 Israeli soldiers dead; nearly all of Gaza displaced
Multi-billion dollar challenges ahead to reconstruct decimated enclave
Gaza’s civil defence agency has accused the Israeli military of carrying out “summary executions” in the killing of 15 rescue workers last month, rejecting the findings of an internal probe by the army.
“The video filmed by one of the paramedics proves that the Israeli occupation’s narrative is false and demonstrates that it carried out summary executions,” Mohammed Al-Mughair, a civil defence official, told AFP, accusing Israel of seeking to “circumvent” its obligations under international law.
Seven people have been arrested in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh for allegedly putting up “Free Gaza, Free Palestine” posters,* Al Jazeera* reports citing The Times of India, which quotes local police.
“The posters called for a boycott of Israeli goods,” officer Baniyathair Ram Veer Singh was quoted by the newspaper as saying, adding that those arrested were caught with the help of CCTV footage.
Three Palestinians were killed and others were injured in an Israeli attack on a tent for displaced people at the Al Jazeera Sports Club in central Gaza City, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
Pope Francis was an outspoken critic of Israel’s attacks on Gaza and made regular calls for a ceasefire, Al Jazeera reports.
Here are some of the occasions he publicly condemned the war on the besieged enclave:
During Francis’s last public remarks on Sunday on the occasion of Easter, the pontiff said: “The Israeli war on the Gaza Strip is generating death and destruction and causing a horrific and shameful humanitarian situation.” He urged a ceasefire and for aid to be allowed to enter Gaza. Israel has blocked the entry of all aid since March 2.
In January, Francis condemned Israel’s military campaign, calling the humanitarian crisis “very serious and shameful”. “We cannot in any way accept the bombing of civilians,” the pope said in an address.
In November, the pope suggested the global community should study whether Israel’s military campaign in Gaza constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is hearing a genocide case against Israel. The late pontiff often was criticised by Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the pope’s comments “disgraceful”.
In September, Francis decried the deaths of Palestinian children in Israeli military strikes in Gaza, calling the bombing of schools on the “presumption” of striking Hamas fighters “ugly”.
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry has condemned Israeli police’s assault on Christians and the restrictions on their access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on the occasion of Holy Saturday, Al Jazeera reports.
“The ministry’s official spokesperson, Ambassador Dr Sufian Qudah, affirmed the kingdom’s absolute condemnation and rejection of the illegal Israeli restrictive measures against Christians, including preventing them from freely accessing the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to perform their religious rituals,” a statement from the ministry said.
“These measures coincide with repeated incursions into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif, in an attempt to impose new realities in the city of Jerusalem, including temporal and spatial division.”
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has paid tribute to Pope Francis, calling him a friend of Palestinians, AFP reports citing the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
“Today, we lost a faithful friend of the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights,” Abbas said, adding that Francis “recognised the Palestinian state and authorised the Palestinian flag to be raised in the Vatican”.
Bassem Naim, a senior official from Hamas, hailed the pope’s opposition to the 18-month-long conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
“Pope Francis was a steadfast advocate for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, particularly in his unwavering stance against the war and acts of genocide perpetrated against our people in Gaza in recent months,” Naim said in a statement.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has reiterated its call for a ceasefire, saying civilians are enduring “unimaginable suffering”, Al Jazeera reports.
“The vast majority of the population in Gaza are children, women and ordinary men,” UNRWA said on X.
“Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Israeli air strikes in Gaza have killed at least 39 Palestinians in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll from 18 months of onslaught to 51,240, the enclave’s health ministry said, Al Jazeera reports.
A ministry statement said that 62 others were admitted to hospitals, taking the number of injuries to 116,931.
An Israeli air attack that hit an area in the so-called safe zone of al-Mawasi near Khan Younis has killed two people — a wife and a husband, when the attack hit a tent housing displaced Palestinians behind the British Hospital, Al Jazeera reports.
The victims were identified as Ibrahim Asbitan Shaqliya and his wife, Bayan Muhammad Al-Dasouqi Shaqliya.
Some 56 per cent of the Israeli public supports an agreement allowing the release of all captives held by Hamas in exchange for the end to the offensive in Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners, according to the latest survey published by Israel’s state broadcaster Kan, reports Al Jazeera.
According to the survey, 22pc of the Israeli public is opposed to such a deal.
The survey, conducted by Kantar Institute, shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party gaining seats in parliament, while the support for Yair Lapid’s opposition Yesh Atid has weakened.
The World Food Programme (WFP) has again reiterated its call for an end to Israel’s blockade on aid into Gaza, saying Palestinians there “do not know where their next meal is coming from”, according to Al Jazeera.
“Gaza needs food now”, the WFP said in a post on X, and urged “all parties to prioritise the needs of civilians, protect humanitarian workers and allow aid to enter Gaza immediately”.
The Israeli blockade, which began on March 2, is the longest continuous restriction on aid into Gaza since Israel launched its war on the territory in October 2023.
Israel has cancelled visas for 27 French left-wing lawmakers and other local officials two days before their trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories, reports Al Jazeera.
The delegation included National Assembly deputies Francois Ruffin, Alexis Corbiere and Julie Ozenne from the Ecologist party; Communist deputy Soumya Bourouaha; Communist senator Marianne Margate, and several town mayors and local lawmakers.
Some 17 members of the group issued a statement condemning the Israeli move and calling on French President Emmanuel Macron to intervene.
They said they had been victims of “collective punishment” and described the visa ban as a “major rupture in diplomatic ties”.
“Deliberately preventing elected officials and parliamentarians from travelling cannot be without consequences,” the group said, demanding action by the government to ensure that Israel lets them into the country.
Jonathan Whittall, who heads the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) in Gaza, has responded to Israeli claims that there was “no evidence to support claims of execution” in the killings of Palestinian paramedics last month, Al Jazeera reports.
“Without accountability, we risk continuing to watch atrocities unfolding, and the norms designed to protect us all, eroding,” Whittall said in a statement.
“Too many civilians, including aid workers, have been killed in Gaza. Their stories have not all made the headlines.”
The number of people killed in the latest Israeli strike on the town of Bani Suheila in south Gaza has risen to four, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
Israeli forces have arrested a young man during a raid on the Balata refugee camp near the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports, citing Palestinian sources.
The arrest came as Israeli forces also raided the Fawwar refugee camp and the Wadi Abu Katila area in Hebron.
Israeli forces have bombed a Palestinian home in Al Zana area of the southern Gaza City, killing and wounding several people, Al Jazeera reports, citing Palestinian media.
The targeted building belonged to the Baraka family, according to the Quds News Network.
Footage published by the network showed medics transferring the dead and wounded to a hospital.

US President Donald Trump is threatening to cut another $1 billion in funding for Harvard University, this time targeting health research, Reuters quotes a Wall Street Journal report as saying, as the administration’s row with elite schools escalated.
The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported the plans to pull an additional $1bn in research funds arose after administration officials thought a long list of demands they sent Harvard on April 11 was a confidential starting point for negotiations, and officials were surprised when Harvard released the letter to the public.
Trump officials had been planning to treat Harvard more leniently than Columbia but now want to increase the pressure on Harvard, The Journal reported.
The White House and Harvard did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment yesterday.
Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice says the findings of an Israeli investigation into the slaying of 15 Palestinian paramedics and aid workers in Gaza raise questions about the Israeli military’s conduct in the Strip and the thoroughness of the investigative process.
“It’s a pretty surprising document. It’s also a document that invites many questions that it will be difficult, I suspect, for the [Israeli military] to answer,” Nice told Al Jazeera in a television interview.
“For example, [there is] the proposition that six of these people were Hamas, presumably members of Hamas on active [military] service, not people who might have been associated with Hamas in some way. No documentary evidence at all is identified [for that],” he added.
The head of an Israeli military probe into the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers in Gaza acknowledged a “mistake” on the part of troops involved in the incident, AFP reports.
“We’re saying it was a mistake, we don’t think it’s a daily mistake,” Major General Yoav Har-Even told journalists when asked if he thought the incident represented a pervasive issue within the Israeli military.
The military also confirmed detaining one medic since the incident on March 23.
The Israeli anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence says that Israel’s probe into the killing of Palestinian medics is “riddled with contradictions, vague phrasing, and selective details”, Al Jazeera reports.
“We all remember when the IDF [Israeli military] claimed that the ambulances’ emergency lights weren’t on — and then we saw the footage proving otherwise. Not every lie has a video to expose it, but this report doesn’t even attempt to engage with the truth,” the group said in a social media post.
“Another day, another cover-up. More innocent lives taken, with no accountability.”
The Israeli military said on Sunday that a review into the killing of 15 emergency responders in Gaza last month found professional failures and violations of orders but no attempt to conceal the incident.
A commanding officer is to be reprimanded and a deputy commander dismissed, the military said.
“The examination identified several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident,” the military said in a statement.
“The examination determined that the fire in the first two incidents resulted from an operational misunderstanding by the troops, who believed they faced a tangible threat from enemy forces. The third incident involved a breach of orders during a combat setting,” it added.
The military said the deputy commander had ordered troops to open fire on individuals emerging from vehicles that were later determined to be a fire truck and several ambulances.
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Israeli settlers have stormed Palestinian land in Khirbet ar-Rakeez in the Hebron governorate in the occupied West Bank, local sources tell Al Jazeera.
Wafa also reports that settlers attacked a bus with stones in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, causing its windows to shatter.
The Palestinian news agency, quoting local sources, added that settlers stole two water tanks used for livestock in the northern Jordan Valley in the West Bank last night.
Israeli restrictions on Christians this year have been perhaps the toughest, says Palestinian pastor and theologian Dr Mitri Raheb, who is also the founder and president of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem.
“I myself, as a pastor, don’t have a permit to go for the holy week, which is the most important week for Christians throughout the year because Jesus was crucified and risen in Jerusalem,” he told Al Jazeera.
“The Palestinian-Christian community that has been there for 2,000 years cannot go there to celebrate and mark this where it all happened.”
On the other hand, Raheb said, incitement against Palestinian Christians, especially clergy members, has been on the rise, with Israeli settlers attacking Christians and spitting at clergy even inside Jerusalem. This year alone, 43 such incidents took place, the pastor said.
“One of the first things you read about in church about Jesus is that he was like a lamb led to the slaughter. But when you hear this today as Palestinian Christians, you think it’s our whole people being led to slaughter, considering what is happening in Gaza.”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has said that disarming the Hezbollah group was a “delicate” matter whose implementation required the right circumstances, warning that forcing the issue could lead the country to ruin.
His remarks came as Lebanon’s health ministry said two people were killed in Israeli strikes in the country’s south, the latest such raids despite a ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese group.
Restricting the bearing of arms to the state is “a sensitive, delicate issue that is fundamental to preserving civil peace” and requires due “consideration and responsibility”, Aoun told reporters.
“We will implement” a state monopoly on bearing arms “but we have to wait for the circumstances” to allow this, he said, adding that “nobody is speaking to me about timing or pressure”.
