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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
President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have said that new negotiations were in the works aimed at getting more hostages released from Hamas captivity in Gaza, AFP reports.
“We’re working now on another deal that we hope will succeed, and we’re committed to getting all the hostages out,” Netanyahu told reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump for his part said: “We are trying very hard to get the hostages out. We’re looking at another ceasefire, we’ll see what happens.”
Netanyahu added that “the hostages are in agony, and we want to get them all out.”
The Israeli leader, seated next to Trump, highlighted an earlier hostage release agreement negotiated in part by Trump’s regional envoy Steve Witkoff that “got 25 out.”
Hamas and rescuers have said an Israeli strike on southern Gaza killed one journalist and wounded nine others, while the Israeli military reported it targeted a fighter posing as a reporter, AFP reports.
An air strike hit a tent used by journalists in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killing two people, said civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal. Nine journalists were wounded in the strike, Bassal added.
The Hamas government media office said journalist Hilmi al-Faqaawi, who worked for a local news agency, was killed in the attack.
The Israeli military meanwhile said its forces had “struck the Hamas terrorist Hassan Abdel Fattah Mohammed Aslih in the Khan Younis area” overnight, without specifying whether he had been killed.
The military claimed Aslih operated “under the guise of a journalist and owns a press company.”
US President Donald Trump has said he would like the conflict in Gaza to stop, as he hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Reuters reports.
Trump said work was ongoing to free hostages held by Hamas, but said securing the release of all the hostages was “a long process.”
Asked if he would deliver on his promise during his campaign for president to end the conflict in Gaza, Trump said: “I’d like to see the war stop, and I think the war will stop at some point, that won’t be in the too-distant future.”
The Israeli military has said that an initial investigation into the killing of 15 emergency workers in south Gaza last month showed that the incident occurred “due to a sense of threat”, Reuters reports.
It said it had identified six Hamas fighters as being in the vicinity during the incident in the city of Rafah.
In a statement, the military said it was conducting a more in depth investigation but the preliminary “inquiry indicated that the troops opened fire due to a perceived threat following a previous encounter in the area”, and that six of the individuals killed “were identified as Hamas” fighters.
Nearly 400,000 Gaza residents have been displaced in the weeks since Israel resumed military operations in the territory, with relentless attacks leading to “large-scale civilian casualties,” the UN secretary general’s spokesman has said, AFP reports.
“Survivors across Gaza are being displaced repeatedly and forced into an ever shrinking space where their basic needs just cannot be met,” said spokesman Stephane Dujarric. “Overall, we estimate that nearly 400,000 people have been displaced yet again since the breakdown of the ceasefire.”
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Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir has ordered a more in-depth investigation into last month’s deadly attack by Israeli soldiers on ambulances in Gaza, the military said, AFP reports.
“The Chief of Staff has instructed a deeper investigation to be conducted and completed in the coming days,” the military said in a statement after it completed an initial investigation into the March 23 shooting.
The heads of six UN agencies have called for an urgent renewal of the ceasefire in Gaza, warning of severe aid shortages and the mounting civilian death toll since Israel resumed fighting against Hamas on March 18, Reuters reports.
No new humanitarian supplies have entered the Palestinian enclave since Israel blocked the entry of aid trucks on March 2, as talks for the next stage of a now-broken truce and a deal for the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas stalled.
“More than 2.1 million people are trapped, bombed and starved again, while, at crossing points, food, medicine, fuel and shelter supplies are piling up, and vital equipment is stuck,” said a statement co-signed by the heads of six UN agencies including the UN’s aid coordination agency (OCHA) and the World Food Programme.
Hamas has slammed a statement by the US which claimed the Palestinian group “uses ambulances and more broadly human shields for terrorism”, Al Jazeera reports.
It said the remarks by Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council, express the Trump administration’s “understanding of the crime of executing Red Crescent and Civil Defence personnel in Rafah”.
“[The remarks] are a hideous example of immoral solidarity with the Nazis of our time in their brutal war against defenceless civilians and humanitarian organisations,” the group said.
“Hughes’s accusations that Hamas is using ambulances are pure lies, devoid of any evidence, propagated by the US administration, alongside the government of war criminal Netanyahu, to justify its heinous and documented crime against paramedics and rescue workers.”
The number of casualties provided to Al Jazeera by medical sources in Gaza has increased throughout the day as Israel continues its attacks across the enclave.
According to the medics, at least 42 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since dawn.
A summit involving the presidents of Egypt and France, as well as Jordan’s King Abdullah II, is taking place in Cairo, Al Jazeera reports.
The three leaders called on the international community to push for a ceasefire in Gaza and the resumption of aid flows, according to a statement by the Jordanian court.
Gaza’s Health Ministry has said that Israel is preventing the entry of polio vaccines into Gaza, threatening the gains made in seven months of efforts to combat the spread of an epidemic, Al Jazeera.
On World Health Day, the ministry said sanitary conditions across Gaza were deteriorating amid the disruption of water pumps and the ban on food and medical aid.
It added that Palestinians, especially children, were exposed to malnutrition as well as the spread of diarrhoea, skin diseases and epidemics.
The Israeli army has sealed off all entrances to the city of Nablus as a general strike continues across cities in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.
Gates and military checkpoints are set up to prevent movement to and from the city, Al Jazeera adds citing local sources.
The Dutch government says it has tightened export controls for all military and “dual use” goods destined for Israel, Al Jazeera reports.
All direct exports and the transit of these goods to Israel will be checked to see if they comply with European regulations, and will no longer be covered by general export licences, the government said in a letter to parliament.
“This is desirable considering the security situation in Israel, the Palestinian territories and the wider region,” Al Jazeera quotes Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp and Trade Minister Reinette Klever.
“Exporters will still be able to request permits, that will then be checked against European regulations.”
The government says no military goods had been exported to Israel under a general permit since the start of the Gaza conflict.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has said that 15 medics and rescuers killed by Israeli forces last month in Gaza were shot in the upper body with “intent to kill”, AFP reports.
Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Red Crescent in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, told journalists in Ramallah: “There has been an autopsy of the martyrs from the Red Crescent and civil defence teams. We cannot disclose everything we know, but I will say that all the martyrs were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill.”
Families and supporters of Israeli captives held in Gaza have rallied outside Netanyahu’s residence in West Jerusalem, demanding a deal to free their loved ones, Al Jazeera reports.
The protesters carried photos of the 59 captives who remain in the Strip.
The demonstration comes hours before Netanyahu meets Trump in the White House.
Varda Ben Baruch, whose grandson Edan Alexander is held captive, urged the two leaders to reach a deal.
“You are in the United States and you should sit there with President Trump and finish a deal for everyone to get home. We are expecting this,” Al Jazeera quotes her as saying.
The aircraft carrying the Israeli Prime Minister from Hungary to the United States flew 400 kilometres further than the normal route to avoid the airspace of several countries that could enforce an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, Al Jazeera reports citing the Haaretz newspaper.
According to the Haaretz report, Israel believed that Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands could have acted to enforce the warrant.
Several cities in the occupied West Bank are staging a general strike in protest over the ongoing massacre in Gaza, where at least 50,695 Palestinians have been killed, Al Jazeera reports.
The walkout included the closure of businesses in Ramallah, el-Bireh, Nablus and Tulkarem, as well as in occupied East Jerusalem, according to Al Jazeera Arabic
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said it is vital to re-establish the ceasefire in Gaza and facilitate the immediate delivery of aid into the territory as well as the release of Israeli captives held there, Al Jazeera reports.
“We also agreed that any calls for forcibly transferring the Palestinians out of their homeland is unacceptable,” el-Sisi added during a joint news conference with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in Cairo.
He said the two leaders discussed a Gaza reconstruction conference to be held in Egypt.
“I unequivocally emphasise that establishing lasting and permanent peace will remain far-fetched so long as the Palestinian cause remains unresolved and so long as the Palestinian people continue to face the consequences of ferocious wars that will deprive the current and future generations of the right to a stable and secure future,” he said.
Israeli troops flattened farmland and cleared entire residential districts in Gaza to open a “kill zone” around the enclave, Reuters reports citing a report that quoted soldiers testifying about the harsh methods used in the operation.
The report, from the Israeli rights group Breaking the Silence, cited soldiers who served in Gaza during the creation of the buffer zone, which was extended to between 800-1,500 metres inside the enclave by December 2024 and which has since been expanded further by Israeli troops.
“The borderline is a kill zone, a lower area, a lowland,” the report quotes a captain in the Armored Corps as saying. “We have a commanding view of it, and they do too.”
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The French president will go tomorrow to El Arish, a town in northern Egypt some 50km (31 miles) from Gaza, where humanitarian aid is gathered, Al Jazeera quotes reporter Bernard Smith.
Before that, Macron will meet this afternoon with Jordan’s King Abdullah II as well as with el-Sisi again to focus particularly on Gaza.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has begun a news conference in el-Bireh, the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.
PRCS is demanding an independent investigation into Israel’s killing of paramedics in Gaza.
“We at PRCS have been accustomed to Israel’s false allegations and fabricated stories with regards to what goes on in the Gaza Strip,” the organisation’s president, Younis al-Khatib, has said during a news conference.
“This involves the assassination of 15 PRCS members. However, we believe that the whole world, including media representatives, have now come to realise who is telling the truth.”
While the released video footage of Israel’s attack on paramedics “was heart-wrenching and painful,” it provided several noticeable elements which al-Khatib said would be presented in the news conference.
Germany has called for an urgent investigation into “shocking” accusations that Israeli forces knowingly fired on a convoy of ambulances in an attack that killed 15 aid workers in Gaza on March 23, AFP reports.
“There are very significant questions about the actions of the Israeli army now,” foreign ministry spokesman Christian Wagner said after new video footage emerged appearing to show the attack. “An investigation and accountability of the perpetrators are urgently needed.”
The Israeli military has dismissed media reports saying the army would allow aid deliveries into the besieged Gaza Strip in response to international pressure and to avoid facing legal consequences, Al Jazeera reports.
“The army was working on a pilot project to distribute aid to the population while not delivering any to Hamas”, Al Jazeera quotes Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli daily mass market newspaper.
Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich dismissed the report, saying, “Not a single grain of wheat will enter the territory.”
Denying the media reports, the army said on X: “Following this morning’s announcement about humanitarian aid, the [Israeli army] is acting in accordance with the directives of the political echelon … Israel is not and will not transfer any aid to Hamas.”
A war crimes complaint against 10 Britons who served with the Israeli military in Gaza is to be submitted to the Met police by Michael Mansfield, one of the UK’s leading human rights lawyers, The Guardian reports.
Mansfield is among a group of lawyers who will hand in a 240-page dossier to Scotland Yard’s war crimes unit alleging targeted killing of civilians and aid workers, including by sniper fire, and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, including hospitals.
According to The Guardian, the report — prepared by a team of UK lawyers and researchers in The Hague — also accuses suspects of coordinated attacks on protected sites, including historic monuments and religious sites, as well as of forced transfer and displacement of civilians.
Mansfield, who is known for his work on landmark cases such as the Grenfell Tower fire, Stephen Lawrence and the Birmingham Six, was quoted as saying: “British nationals are under a legal obligation not to collude with crimes committed in Palestine. No one is above the law.”
Sean Summerfield, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers who helped compile the dossier, said it was based on open-source evidence and witness testimony, which together presented a “compelling” case.
French President Emmanuel Macron has urged for a ceasefire in Gaza and the lifting of Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid while in Cairo to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Al Jazeera reports.
Macron met el-Sisi at the Ittihadiya Palace for high-level talks aimed at inking a series of cooperation agreements.
The two leaders were also expected to meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah II for a trilateral summit on the situation in Gaza.
