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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
The death toll from an earlier Israeli attack on a home in the Katiba area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza has risen to 10, Al Jazeera reports citing local Palestinian media.
It was reported earlier that three children and two women were killed in the Katiba attack. There were no details on the latest casualties.
Eight people were also reported killed in an Israeli military strike in the Sheikh Nasser area, east of Khan Younis, in the early hours of this morning. The attack targeted the al-Farra family home, according to reports.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has posted a video on X in which it reiterated its call for a renewal of the ceasefire deal, abandoned by Israel last month.
The video contains the testimony of Umm Khaled from Gaza City’s Shujayea, who has been displaced five times during Israel’s war on the enclave. She said her family doesn’t have enough food and are forced to live in cramped conditions with barely enough space to sit down.
Bashar Masri, a Palestinian-American businessman, has resigned from his position on the dean’s council at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Al Jazeera reports, citing The New York Post.
The report comes days after Masri was accused by nearly 200 Americans, including survivors and relatives of victims of the October 7 attacks on Israel, of providing assistance in constructing infrastructure that allowed Hamas fighters to carry out their deadly assault.
“Mr Masri has resigned from the Dean’s Council. The lawsuit raises serious allegations that should be vetted and addressed through the legal process,” the school reportedly said.
The plaintiffs in the suit, filed in the US District Court for Washington, DC, claim properties that the Palestinian-American owned, developed and controlled concealed tunnels underneath them and had tunnel entrances accessible from within the properties, which Hamas used before and after October 7. Masri’s office called the lawsuit “baseless”.
Israel and Egypt have reportedly exchanged draft documents on a ceasefire-for-captives deal, according to a report from Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, Al Jazeera reports.
The new proposals are aimed at bridging the gap between a ceasefire extension tabled by US special envoy Steve Witkoff, and a counter one tabled by Egypt and Qatar in late March, according to the report.
Witkoff’s proposal, tabled last month, called for the release of five Israeli captives in exchange for a two month ceasefire and the release a large number of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.
Egypt’s proposal calls for Hamas to release of eight living captives and eight deceased captives in exchange for a truce lasting between 40 and 70 days, as well as Israel releasing a large number of Palestinians from prisons.
Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesperson, issued a warning to residents of the Shujayea district and at least five other areas in the east of Gaza City, ordering them to displace to the west.
The Israeli military “is operating with great force in your areas to destroy terrorist infrastructure,” Adraee claimed in a post on X, showing a map with the areas to be evacuated marked in red.
A Copenhagen court is to rule whether a lawsuit filed by four humanitarian organisations accusing Denmark of violating international law by exporting weapons to Israel is admissible in court, AFP reports.
The Palestinian human rights association Al-Haq, Amnesty International, Oxfam and Action Aid Denmark filed the lawsuit against the Danish foreign ministry and national police last year.
They said in a statement there was a risk that “Danish military material was being used to commit serious crimes against civilians in Gaza”.
The associations targeted the foreign ministry in their lawsuit since it “determines whether there is a risk that weapons and weapons components could be used to violate human rights” and the police because it was the authority responsible for issuing export licences.
Denmark’s Eastern High Court is expected to announce its decision around 10am (1pm PKT).
Read full story here.
The al-Salam neighbourhood in southern Khan Younis has come under heavy shelling and air strikes have struck nearby Rafah. Two people have been killed and several others injured in that attack, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
Local Palestinian media also reports people killed and wounded after Israeli strikes on a group of civilians in the al-Atatra neighbourhood of Beit Lahiya, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Jenin Brigades — an umbrella group of Palestinians fighting against the Israeli occupation — have claimed responsibility for an improvised explosive device (IED) attack on Israeli military vehicles in the occupied West Bank, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
The Brigades said in a statement that a “highly explosive device” was prepared in advance and detonated against “enemy vehicles” at the entrance to the town of Silat al-Harithiya in Jenin.
There were no initial reports of casualties.
The Nablus battalion of the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), also reported “battles” with Israeli forces in several areas of the Old City in Nablus.
Activists poured 300 litres of a blood-red coloured biodegradable dye into an ornamental pond outside the US embassy in London, to draw attention to Washington’s arming of Israel amid the war on Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.
The Greenpeace activists turned the embassy’s pond into a lake of symbolic blood, using a container to dispense the dye bearing the words: “Stop Arming Israel”.
Will McCallum, Greenpeace UK’s co-executive director, was among five people arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage, the activist group and police said.
The Israeli military has killed at least eight people after bombing the Farra family home in the Sheikh Nasser area, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
But Al Jazeera Arabic now reports that a second attack has taken place in Khan Younis, with Israeli fighter jets bombing a home in the Katiba area in the north of the city.
At least six people have been killed, including three children and two women.
US authorities have charged 12 protesters with felony vandalism for participating in a June 2024 pro-Palestine demonstration at Stanford University in California, Al Jazeera reports.
The charged — who range in age from 19 to 32 — barricaded themselves inside the office of the school president last year. Prosecutors accuse the group of “conspiracy to occupy” the building, adding that at least one suspect entered by breaking a window.
The university said at the time that 13 people were arrested during the protest, while one police officer was injured and the building suffered “extensive” damage.
“On the other side of the Gaza Strip, we can see that there has been pretty much a concentration on targeting makeshift tents and residential homes in the city of Khan Younis,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports from Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip.
“Israel is systematically looking to isolate significant parts and tracts of land in Gaza in order to expand the so-called ‘buffer zone’.
“But there is more, growing — not just military pressure, but also medical isolation,” he said.
Gaza’s healthcare system has been left struggling to survive and provide the minimal level of medical services for the surging numbers of casualties arriving to the hospitals, and for also ensuring the stability of the medical service due to the chronic shortages of all essential medical supplies as the Israeli blockade continues, he added.
Al Jazeera Arabic reports that a woman has been killed and several people wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in the Sheikh Nasser area, east of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
The site targeted for attack was reported to be the al-Farra family home.
Israeli attacks were also reported to the north of Rafah city, also in the south, and artillery shelling hit the Qizan Abu Rashwan area, southeast of Khan Younis.
The director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned Israel’s continuing blockage of all humanitarian relief into Gaza increases the risk of disease and death, Al Jazeera reports.
Speaking at a news conference in Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 75 per cent of UN missions within Gaza were denied or impeded last week.
Tedros said the WHO took advantage of Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas to resupply the health system, however, after six weeks of blockade, those supplies will run out in two to four weeks unless the siege is lifted.
More than 10,000 wounded or people with disease in Gaza needing to go abroad for medical care still await evacuation, he added.
The death toll in Gaza since the conflict began on October 7, 2023 has risen to 50,887, Al Jazeera reports citing new Palestinian health ministry figures.
Another 115,875 Palestinians have been wounded, the ministry said, while thousands are considered missing.
Israel’s Supreme Court has rejected a petition against cutting the electricity supply to the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reports.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz is reporting that Israel’s Supreme Court Justices have ruled that decisions of such a nature are the executive branch’s responsibility and not for the courts to adjudicate on.
The newspaper said the petitioners had claimed the move would lead to a renewal of the fighting and jeopardise the safety of the captives while also violating international humanitarian law.
Haaretz reported that the initial petition was submitted before Israel broke the ceasefire in Gaza. Given that Israel has resumed fighting, the Justices deemed the petition irrelevant.
A Hamas official has said that the group welcomed the announcement by French President Emmanuel Macron that Paris could recognise a Palestinian state by June, hailing it as an “important step”.
“France, as a country with political weight and a permanent member of the (UN) Security Council, has the ability to influence the course of fair solutions and push towards ending the occupation and achieving the aspirations of the Palestinian people,” Mahmud Mardawi told AFP.
An Israeli military official has said that reserve fighter pilots, who publicly called for securing the release of hostages even at the cost of ending the Gaza conflict, would be dismissed from the air force, AFP reports.
“With the full backing of the chief of the General Staff, the commander of the IAF (Israeli Air Force) has decided that any active reservist who signed the letter will not be able to continue serving in the IDF (military),” the official told AFP in response to a letter signed by around 1,000 reserve and retired pilots that appeared in the media.
Nearly 1,000 Israeli retired and reservist fighter pilots have called in an open letter for the government to prioritise freeing remaining hostages held in Gaza, even if that meant halting the military campaign, Reuters reports.
An Israeli military official said signatories who are on active duty would be dismissed over the letter, which said the offensive “mainly serves personal and political interests, rather than genuine security needs”.
The letter, published by several Israeli media outlets, was signed by 980 reservists, most of them retired with around 10 percent on active reserve duty, one signatory told Reuters.
The letter demanded “the immediate return of all our hostages without delay, even at the cost of stopping the war immediately”.
Police in London have said they arrested at least five people after Greenpeace activists poured red dye into a pond outside the US embassy in protest against arms sales to Israel, AFP reports.
The campaign group said a dozen activists poured 300 litres of biodegradable dye into the pond outside the embassy in southwest London, using containers bearing the words “Stop Arming Israel”.
However, Greenpeace UK said six people had been arrested, including one of its heads, but the police did not provide the names of those detained.
Greenpeace UK’s co-executive director Will McCallum was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage, the group said in a statement.
“These arrests are further proof that the right to protest is under attack in the UK. This protest used biodegradable pond dye that is designed to disperse and wash away naturally,” said co-executive director Areeba Hamid.
The health ministry in Gaza has said stocks of essential medicines in the enclave’s hospitals and medical centres have reached “dangerous and unprecedented levels” amid Israel’s aid blockade, Al Jazeera reports.
According to the report, the ministry said 37 per cent of the essential drug list has zero stock while 59pc of the medical supplies’ list has zero stock.
It further said 54pc of cancer and blood disease medications have zero stock.
“Surgery, intensive care and emergency departments are operating with depleted stocks of life-saving medications and supplies,” it was quoted as saying.
The ministry added 80,000 diabetic patients and 110,000 hypertensive patients were unable to receive care.
After 10 years of incarceration, the Israeli army has released prisoner Ahmad Manasra from Nafha Prison, Al Jazeera reports.
Manasra was subjected to various forms of physical and psychological torture since his arrest as a child at the age of 13, Al Jazeera cited the Palestinian Prisoners Club as saying.
The Jerusalem Prisoners’ Committees said the Israeli army released Manasra far from the prison, while his family awaited his release at the prison gate. A Bedouin resident in the Beersheba area recognised the 23-year-old, contacted his family, and informed them of their son’s release, a source told Al Jazeera.
Manasra was initially sentenced to 12 years in prison, later reduced to nine years, for being with his cousin Hassan Manasra, who allegedly stabbed two Israeli settlers near the illegal settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev in occupied East Jerusalem in 2015.
Hassan, who was 15 at the time, was shot dead by an Israeli civilian, while Ahmad was severely beaten by an Israeli mob and run over by an Israeli driver, suffering fractures to his skull and internal bleeding.
A video showing Ahmad Manasra bleeding on the ground and gasping for help, while Israeli bystanders shouted and swore at the boy, telling him to “die”, garnered widespread attention and outrage.
Another video of Manasra undergoing harsh Israeli interrogation after the incident caused further anger.
Despite not having participated in the attack — which the courts acknowledged — Manasra was charged with attempted murder.
Israeli forces have assaulted Palestinians in a village near Hebron in West Bank while demolishing three homes housing 15 people, Al Jazeera says, citing the Ma’an news agency.
The demolitions started without previous notice or court order, and the Palestinians were not allowed to move out their belongings, according to the report.
Ar-Rihiya is a Palestinian town 6km southwest of Hebron in the southern West Bank.
In a separate episode also near Hebron, Israeli settlers under the protection of Israeli forces attacked shepherds in the Rujoum Ali area in Masafer Yatta. The settlers severely beat a Palestinian who was transferred to hospital for treatment, the report added.
Settlers continuously attack shepherds in Masafer Yatta and prevent them from grazing their sheep while they release their sheep on Palestinian lands under the protection of Israeli forces.
Medical sources in Gaza have informed Al Jazeera that 19 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since dawn.
The sources told Al Jazeera that 45 Palestinians were killed yesterday, including 35 in a bombing of a house on Baghdad Street in the Shujaiya neighbourhood, in the east of Gaza City.
The sources added that of the 19, 11 fatalities were reported in Gaza City alone.
The Israeli army has released some 80 Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reports citing Anadolu Agency.
The detainees were set free at the Israeli-controlled Kissufim crossing in eastern Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the sources added.
A medical source said at least 10 of the freed prisoners were in poor health and were hospitalised at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir el-Balah.
