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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 54,000 Palestinians, 400 Israeli soldiers dead; nearly all of Gaza displaced
Multi-billion dollar challenges ahead to reconstruct decimated enclave
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini says there is “hope and anticipation” for a ceasefire deal, calling it “desperately needed and long overdue”, Al Jazeera reports.
“People in Gaza are exhausted after nearly 660 days of war, displacement, bombing and siege,” he said in a post on X. “A deal is paramount.”
Lazzarini stressed that the starvation of the Palestinian people must end, and the flow of humanitarian aid must resume “uninterrupted and safely under UN mechanisms, including UNRWA”.
Public trust in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands at just 40 per cent, according to a new survey released by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), revealing the ongoing divisions within Israeli society amid its military campaign on Gaza, Al Jazeera reports
The poll, conducted last month during the final days of fighting with Iran and cited by Israeli media, found significantly higher trust in Israel’s top security officials. Israeli military Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir topped the list with a 68.5pc trust rating, followed by Mossad director David Barnea at 67pc.
Even among Jewish Israelis, only 46pc expressed trust in Netanyahu, while just 10pc of Palestinian citizens of Israel said the same.
Defence Minister Israel Katz received an even lower overall trust rating than Netanyahu, with just 35pc of respondents expressing confidence in him.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has said that his country is serious about reaching a deal with Hamas to end the fighting in Gaza and return the hostages held there to Israel, Reuters reports.
At a press conference in the Estonian capital Tallinn, Saar said: “We are serious in our will to reach a hostage deal and a ceasefire. We said yes to [US] special envoy [Steve] Witkoff’s proposals.
“There are some positive signs. I dont want to say more than that right now. But our goal is to begin proximity talks as soon as possible,” said Saar, who spoke after holding talks with Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna.
British lawmakers have voted to ban pro-Palestinian campaign group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, after its activists broke into a military base and damaged two planes in protest at what it says is Britain’s support for Israel, Reuters reports.
Britain’s proscription order will reach parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, on Thursday. If approved by lawmakers there, Palestine Action’s ban would become effective in the following days.
The group, which has called its proscription unjustified and an “abuse of power,” has challenged the decision in court and an urgent hearing is expected on Friday.

At least 17 people have been killed, most of them women and children, in the Israeli bombing of a building housing displaced people in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, south of Gaza City, Al Jazeera reports.
Hamas has said it is studying what US President Donald Trump called a “final” ceasefire proposal for Gaza but that Israel must pull out of the enclave, Reuters reports.
In a statement, Hamas said it was studying new ceasefire offers it received from mediators Egypt and Qatar, but stressed it aimed to reach an agreement that would ensure an end to the fighting and an Israeli pullout from Gaza.
Read more here.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for the elimination of Hamas in his first public remarks since US President Donald Trump announced what he called a “final proposal” for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza, Reuters reports.
“There will not be a Hamas. There will not be a Hamastan. We’re not going back to that. It’s over,” Netanyahu told a meeting hosted by the Trans-Israel pipeline.
Hamas is reviewing new ceasefire proposals from mediators, aiming for an agreement that would end the Gaza conflict and ensure the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave, Reuters reports citing a statement.
Switzerland has initiated proceedings to dissolve the Geneva branch of the controversial, US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid group, citing legal shortcomings in its establishment, Reuters reports.
The GHF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Swiss move to shut down its Geneva office.
“The ESA may order the dissolution of the foundation if no creditors come forward within the legal 30-day period,” the Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA) said in a creditors’ notice published in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce.
The ESA told Reuters that the GHF had not fulfilled certain legal requirements, including having the correct number of board members, a postal address or a Swiss bank account.
“GHF confirmed to the ESA that it had never carried out activities in Switzerland … and that it intends to dissolve the Geneva-registered (branch),” the ESA said in a statement.
Marwan Al-Sultan, the director of Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital, has been killed along with his family in an Israeli strike in Gaza City, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
He was killed in an attack on a residential building in an area southwest of Gaza City. His wife and children were also killed in the attack.
Al-Sultan was a key source of information from Gaza, reporting on the conditions of Palestinians in the north of the besieged enclave.
He had repeatedly called on the international community to press for medical teams’ safety, including when the Israeli army laid siege or struck the Indonesian Hospital.
Palestinians have gathered in the Tulkarem refugee camp in the occupied West Bank to attempt to recover their possessions from their homes before they are demolished by Israeli forces, Al Jazeera reports.
The head of the popular committee in the camp told Al Jazeera Arabic that about 400 families would be made homeless by the Israeli order to demolish more than 100 homes.
The official said a two-hour deadline given by Israeli authorities to retrieve belongings was insufficient for families to remove their possessions.
The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza since dawn has risen to 43, hospital sources have told Al Jazeera.
The interior ministry in Gaza on has ordered the leader of a well-armed Bedouin clan defying the group’s control of the Palestinian enclave to surrender and face trial, accusing him of treason, Reuters reports.
A ministry statement said the decision was taken by what it called a “Revolutionary Court”. Yasser Abu Shabab, who does not recognize the authority of Hamas and accuses the group of hurting the interests of Gaza, has 10 days to surrender, it said.
The court urged Palestinians to inform Hamas security officials about the whereabouts of Abu Shabab, who has so far remained beyond their reach in the Rafah area of southern Gaza held by Israeli troops. There was no immediate response from his group to the surrender order.
Hamas, which accuses Abu Shabab of looting UN aid trucks and alleges that he is backed by Israel, has sent some of its top fighters to kill him, two Hamas sources and two other sources familiar with the situation told Reuters last month.
Abu Shabab’s group told Reuters at the time that it is a popular force protecting humanitarian aid from looting by escorting aid trucks and denied getting support from Israel or contacts with the Israeli army. It accused Hamas of violence and muzzling dissent.
Israel has said it has backed some of Gaza’s clans against Hamas but has not said which.
“Here on the ground in Gaza, the reaction to [US President] Donald Trump’s announcement of a proposed ceasefire has been met with a mix of guarded hope and deep scepticism,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports from Deir el-Balah, Gaza.
“After nearly 21 months of widespread destruction, mass displacement and bombardment, Palestinians here are desperate for any pause in the attacks.
“But this hope has been dampened by their previous bitter experience. Previously, ceasefire talks have repeatedly collapsed, and many Palestinians say they’ve heard this rhetoric before from Trump,” he said.
“At the moment, though, they believe there’s serious will from Trump to pressure both Hamas and Israel to reach a ceasefire deal.
“Until now, Israel has not publicly confirmed the agreement, and the fact that Hamas remains silent only deepens the uncertainty,” Azzoum reported.
“The overwhelming sentiment among Palestinians is that they are looking for a full and comprehensive de-escalation in hostilities, and to see a mitigation in their appalling humanitarian conditions. And that cannot take place without a sustained ceasefire.”




Gaza’s civil defence agency has said that Israeli strikes have killed multiple members of the two families across the enclave, AFP reports.
In southern Gaza, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five members of the same family were killed and several others wounded in an Israeli air strike that hit a tent housing displaced people in the coastal Al-Mawasi area.
AFP images from the nearby Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis city, showed medics treating young children covered in blood. Some appeared terrified while others lay still on hospital beds in bloodied bandages and clothes.
Further north, Bassal said that four people from the same family were killed in a pre-dawn Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza City, and another five in a drone strike on a house in the central Deir el-Balah area.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military requested precise coordinates for the targeted locations and said it “will try to look into” the reports.

Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Saar has said that any opportunity to free hostages held in Gaza should not be missed, after US President Donald Trump said Israel had agreed to finalise a 60-day ceasefire, AFP reports.
“A large majority within the government and the population is in favour of the plan to free the hostages. If the opportunity arises, it must not be missed!” Gideon Saar wrote on X.
More than 30 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn today, sources in the territory’s hospitals tell Al Jazeera.
Among the dozens of fatalities were six people killed in a drone strike on tents housing displaced people in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Ten others, most of them children, were injured in the strike, medical sources say.
As reported by Al Jazeera earlier, five people, including children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
Another Israeli air attack on a house in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City has killed four Palestinians including two children, a source at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital told Al Jazeera Arabic.

The US Mission to the UN has accused Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese of committing “political and economic warfare against the American and worldwide economy” after she released a new report mapping the corporations aiding the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, Al Jazeera reports.
The mission accused Albanese of using “deeply flawed legal arguments to support extreme and unfounded accusations” that “dozens of entities worldwide, including major American corporations”, are “complicit in gross human rights violations, apartheid, and genocide”.
The mission called for UN Chief Antonio Guterres to condemn Albanese’s activities and for the removal of the independent rapporteur, who was appointed to her role by the UN Human Rights Council, a body made up of 47 member states.

A report by the UN expert on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, has mapped the corporations allegedly aiding Israel in the displacement of Palestinians and its “genocidal” war on Gaza.
According to Al Jazeera, the report names 48 corporate actors, including US tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent company, and Amazon.
A database of more than 1,000 corporate entities was also put together as part of the investigation.
“Companies are no longer merely implicated in occupation — they may be embedded in an economy of genocide,” the report said, in a reference to Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.
The report stated that its findings illustrate why Israel’s “genocide” continues — “Because it is lucrative for many.”
Read more here.
The World Food Programme has warned that the opportunity to push back starvation in Gaza is closing fast as Israel continues to restrict the entry of aid into the besieged enclave, according to Al Jazeera.
Samer Abdel Jaber, the WFP’s regional director, said the agency needs three things to address the hunger crisis in Gaza.
These are “multiple points of access and safe routes to reach families that are constantly being displaced; support from the international community to allow and enable humanitarian actors to do their job; and more than anything, we need a sustained ceasefire”, he said.

Al Jazeera Arabic reports that there have been several attacks that have killed and wounded several people in northern and central Gaza.
In northern Gaza City, several people were killed and wounded in an Israeli attack on a house on Jaffa Street. Several more were wounded, also in Gaza City, in a drone attack on the al-Karama neighbourhood.
In central Deir el-Balah, at least 10 others were wounded in an Israeli attack on tents sheltering displaced people.