Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 531

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that “the government of Israel will decide” who heads the domestic security agency, after the supreme court froze its bid to oust the incumbent, Ronen Bar, AFP reports.

“The State of Israel is a state of law, and according to the law, the government of Israel decides who will be the head of the Shin Bet,” Netanyahu said on X without mentioning the court’s decision.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed “concern” over the fresh Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip and said Moscow was ready to help “de-escalate” the situation, AFP reports.

In a readout of a phone call between Putin and the Emir of Qatar, the Kremlin said: “Concern was expressed over the resumption of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, and the readiness of both countries to promote de-escalation and long-term normalisation in the region was stressed.”

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, has issued a statement saying it is mourning its 10th staff member killed since Israel’s military campaign started in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

“MSF is shocked and saddened by the killing of our colleague Alaa Abd-Elsalam Ali Okal by an Israeli air strike on his apartment building in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza,” it said.

“Along with hundreds of others across the Gaza Strip, Alaa Abd-Elsalam Ali Okal was killed in the early morning of 18 March following the resumption of Israeli attacks.”

The 29-year-old was a laundry worker with the organisation and “played an important role in supporting people in need of medical care at MSF’s field hospital in Deir el-Balah”.

“We condemn the killing of our colleague and call yet again for the respect and protection of civilians.”

The Israeli army has hit the Turkish Friendship Hospital for Cancer Patients in central Gaza, the only medical facility delivering cancer care in the Strip, Al Jazeera reports.

The facility had already been severely damaged by Israeli air strikes in October 2023.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot says France is against any annexation of the Gaza Strip or the occupied West Bank after Israel’s defence minister threatened to permanently take over parts of Gaza unless Hamas releases captives, Al Jazeera reports.

“France is opposed to any form of annexation whether it concerns the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. We have a very clear vision of the future of the region — a solution of two states living side-by-side in peace,” Barrot told reporters in the eastern city of Dijon.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy told parliament Israel’s barrage of missiles that killed hundreds of Palestinians — the majority women and children — is “an appalling loss of life and we mourn the loss of every civilian”, Al Jazeera reports.

A UN compound in Gaza was hit in the attacks and he confirmed “a British national was amongst the wounded”.

“Gaza has been the most dangerous place in the world to be an aid worker,” Lamy noted. “I share the outrage of UN Secretary-General Guterres at this incident.

“For weeks now, supplies of basic goods and electricity have been blocked, leaving over half a million civilians once again cut off from clean drinking water and sparking a 200 per cent surge in the price of some basic foodstuffs — a boon to those criminals who use violence to control supplies.”

Andreas Krieg, associate professor of security studies at King’s College London, has said Israel has used the two-month ceasefire to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of “Hamas cells” as well as potential locations of the captives.

“I think what they’re trying to do now is further degrade Hamas and potentially kill some of its leaders, which they’ve done over the past couple of days, and apart from that, seize more territory,” Krieg told Al Jazeera.

The plan is part of what the far-right Israeli government wants to achieve, including expelling all the Palestinians from Gaza as outlined by President Trump’s “bizarre vision of the Riviera of the Middle East”, he added.

“It wants to seize territory and potentially never return it. It wants to lock the people of Gaza up into smaller cells and then move in.”

At least 200 children have been killed in Gaza since Israel resumed its war on the enclave this week, Al Jazeera reports, citing Unicef spokesperson in Gaza Rosalia Paulin.

Medical authorities said more than 590 Palestinians have been killed so far and the death toll continues to rise as Israeli air attacks and ground assaults intensify.

Defense Minister Israel Katz has said Israel will seize Gaza land until Hamas agrees to release all captives still held in the Strip, Al Jazeera reports.

“The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed to Israel,” Katz was quoted by The Jerusalem Post as saying.

“If the hostages are not released, Israel will continue to take more and more territory in the Strip for permanent control.”

Israel is accused of not being a state for all its citizens, as 20 per cent of the population of indigenous Palestinians face systematic discrimination, according to Al Jazeera.

But what is happening now is that Netanyahu and his coalition have managed to split the Jewish citizens of Israel between the loyalists and the opposition, who feel their institutions that have worked so far to protect the Zionist ideal are under threat.

The former head of the Supreme Court in Israel has accused Netanyahu and his allies of pushing Israel into civil war, Al Jazeera noted. “This is a man who attended the International Court of Justice on behalf of Israel as a judge during the hearings where Israel was accused of genocide.”

As “someone who has fiercely defended Israel”, the former judge is extremely worried what is happening is polarising the state so much that clashes are possible, the report added.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says US threats “will get them nowhere when confronting Iran” after President Trump warned of possible military action against the country, Al Jazeera reports.

“They [US] and others should know if they do anything malign to the Iranian nation, they will get a hard slap,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said during a live televised speech.

The US president’s threat that “every shot” fired by the Houthis in Yemen will be viewed as an attack from Iran has escalated tensions.

The UN Security Council will meet for a second straight day on Palestinian territories, this time focusing on Israel’s months-long assault on the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.

Yesterday’s UNSC meeting tackled the grim situation in onslaught-battered Gaza, with Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polyansky criticising Israeli leaders for not moving to phase two of the ceasefire deal.

Britain’s deputy ambassador, James Kariuki, condemned Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz’s “warning of the total destruction of Gaza”, Al Jazeera added.

A children’s rights group has accused Israeli forces of stripping, humiliating, terrorising and detaining two Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, after shooting and killing their grandmother, according to Al Jazeera.

Defence for Children Palestine (DCIP) said seven-year-old Ibrahim Abu Ghali, and 13-year-old Omar Mohammed Dirar Zaben, were visiting their grandparents’ home on March 10, west of Jenin, when their grandmother was shot for going outside to listen for the morning call to prayer during an Israeli military raid.

Israeli soldiers then forced the two children to strip to their underwear at gunpoint, alongside their grandfather. Practically naked, the three had their hands bound with cable ties, and were held outdoors in the cold for about an hour before being pushed onto the floor or a military vehicle — still without clothes — and taken for interrogation.

“Forcing young children to strip, detaining them in degrading conditions, and subjecting them to psychological terror is a clear violation of international law and amounts to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” DCIP’s Ayed Abu Eqtaish said.

After nearly 12 hours of “arbitrary detention”, the children were put in the back of a military truck and taken home — still in their underwear — where they discovered their grandmother had been killed by the Israeli gunfire.

Hamas has released a statement saying Ronen Bar’s letter to ministers claiming that Netanyahu intentionally sabotaged the Gaza ceasefire deal revealed the Israeli prime minister’s unwillingness to move ahead with negotiations, Al Jazeera reports.

The Shin Bet chief’s claims “reveal Netanyahu’s deliberate manipulation of negotiations and his attempt to sabotage any agreement”, the group said.

“These confessions from within the leadership of [Israel] confirm that Netanyahu was and still is the real obstacle to any exchange deal,” it added.

The UN Security Council will meet for a second straight day on Palestine, this time focusing on Israel’s months-long assault on the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.

Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Munir Akram has “strongly condemned” the resumption of Israeli strikes on Gaza and the “indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians through bombardments, airstrikes, and artillery fire”, according to state media Radio Pakistan.

During the UN Security Council briefing on the Middle East, he urged the international community to not ignore the “suffering of the Palestinian people”, stressing that justice and human rights cannot be applied selectively.

He also highlighted the significance of the upcoming conference by France and Saudi Arabia, which is crucial to advance the peaceful resolution of the Palestinian issue and implement the two-state solution.

US fighter jets have carried out six air raids in the at-Tuhayta district in Yemen’s Hodeidah governorate, Al Jazeera quotes Al-Manar as saying.

No casualties have been reported so far.

Israel’s military has expanded ground operations across Gaza, after it claimed intercepting missiles from Yemen and Hamas said they fired rockets towards Tel Aviv, AFP reports.

The rocket fire from Hamas was its first military response to the growing civilian death toll from Israel’s resumption of aerial bombardment and ground operations in Gaza this week.

The military said troops had begun “conducting ground activity” in the Shabura area of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city near the Egyptian border.

“As part of the activity, the troops dismantled … terrorist infrastructure,” the military claimed in a statement, adding that “troops are continuing ground activity in northern and central Gaza”.

Meanwhile, Israel struck Rafah and Khan Younis in the south of the besieged enclave and Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, Al Jazeera reported, quoting local media.

Gaza’s City Zeitoun neighbourhood has come under “heavy” attack from Israeli aircraft, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.

Air attacks have also been reported in southern Gaza’s Rafah and Israel warplanes have bombed areas of nearby Khan Younis, the report added.

In a court filing this week, Indian post-doctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri’s lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, said Suri and his Palestinian-American wife Mapheze Saleh “have long been doxxed and smeared”, Al Jazeera reports.

Saleh’s photograph has been published online, while information relating to her former employment with Al Jazeera and her birthplace in Gaza City have been cited as evidence of “her alleged ties with Hamas”, the filing said.

Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown, said Saleh’s father, Ahmed Yousef, is a former adviser to Hamas. However, Hashemi added, Suri was never outwardly political on campus and did not attend pro-Palestine protests.

A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration not to deport Badar Khan Suri, an Indian man studying at Washington’s Georgetown University whose lawyer has said the United States was seeking to remove him after it accused him of harming US foreign policy.

Reuters notes the order is to remain in effect until lifted by the court, according to the three-paragraph order by US District Judge Patricia Giles in Alexandria, Virginia.

The American Civil Liberties Union also defended Suri and said he was “transferred to multiple immigration detention centres” before being taken to Alexandria, Louisiana.

Federal agents arrested Suri outside his home in Rosslyn, Virginia on Monday night. The lawyer welcomed the ruling and called it “the first bit of due process Dr Khan Suri has received since he was snatched from his family Monday night”.

US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz has expressed his support for Israel’s renewed military onslaught on Gaza, which has killed hundreds of Palestinians since Tuesday.

“Israel has every right to defend its people from Hamas terrorists,” Waltz insisted in a post on X.

“The ceasefire would have been extended if Hamas released all remaining hostages. Instead, they chose war,” he added.

The Israeli government has unanimously approved a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to dismiss Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, Reuters quotes the prime minister’s office as saying.

“Ronen Bar will conclude his duties on April 10 or when a permanent ISA Director is appointed — whichever comes first,” it added.

On Sunday, Netanyahu told the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service that he will ask the government to approve his dismissal this week.

Justifying his decision, Netanyahu said he had long ago lost confidence in Bar and that trust in the head of the domestic security service, whose roles include counter-terrorism and security for government officials, was especially crucial at a time of a military campaign.

Bar’s sacking would be likely to draw widespread criticism amid a new Israeli offensive in Gaza with dozens of Israeli hostages still held there.