Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 561

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.

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”.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls on the international community to break its silence and undertake efforts to protect Jerusalem and its holy sites after Israel put restrictions on Christian worshippers and even attacked some of them, Al Jazeera reports.

“The occupation’s attacks and collective punishments during the holy Easter are manifestations of genocide, displacement, and annexation,” the ministry posted on X.

Israeli air strikes since dawn have killed at least 25 people across the Gaza Strip, including women and children, AFP quotes the enclave’s civil defence agency as saying.

“Since dawn today, the occupation’s air strikes have killed 20 people and injured dozens more, including children and women across the Gaza Strip,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency told AFP.

In a separate statement later, the agency reported that five people were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a group of civilians in eastern Rafah.

Pope Francis has reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in an Easter Sunday message read aloud by an aide as the pontiff, still recovering from pneumonia, looked on during a brief appearance on the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, Reuters reports.

The 88-year-old pope, limiting his workload on doctors’ orders, did not preside over the Vatican’s Mass for Easter but appeared at the end of the event for a twice-yearly blessing and message known as the ‘Urbi et Orbi’ (to the city and the world).

In the Easter message, the pontiff said the situation in Gaza was “dramatic and deplorable”. The pope also called on Hamas to release its remaining hostages and condemned what he said was a “worrisome” trend of antisemitism in the world.

“I express my closeness to the sufferings … of all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people,” said the message. “I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace,” it said.

In its latest death toll update, the Gaza Ministry of Health says that in addition to the 44 deaths, there have been 145 injuries in the past 24 hours, Al Jazeera reports.

“There are still a number of victims under the rubble and on the streets, and ambulance and civil defence crews cannot reach them”, it said.

“The death toll from the Israeli aggression has risen to 51,201 martyrs and 116,869 wounded since October 7, 2023”, it said, adding that since Israel resumed new offensive on March 18, 1,827 people have been killed and 4,828 injured.

The Wafa news agency reports that Israeli forces launched a drone attack on farmers in the southern town of Abasan, near Khan Younis, killing at least two people and wounding several more.

Israeli forces also carried out air raids on Gaza City, targeting a group of civilians in Zeitoun neighbourhood and killing at least two people.

A separate Israeli attack on Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood killed at least two more people.

Wafa also provided more details on the person killed in al-Mawasi. It identified the victim as 23-year-old Waseem Abu Mousa.

The renewed attacks come as Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to intensify the war on Gaza.

Medical sources say Israeli attacks since the early hours of this morning have killed at least 19 people, Al Jazeera reports.

These include at least five people killed in Gaza City’s Tuffah neighbourhood and two others killed in Khan Younis’s al-Manara neighbourhood.

Qatar’s chief negotiator has voiced frustration over talks for a truce in Gaza in an interview with AFP, a month after Israel resumed its strikes on the Palestinian territory and another round of negotiations ended without a deal.

“We’re definitely frustrated by the slowness, sometimes, of the process in the negotiation. This is an urgent matter. There are lives at stake here if this military operation continues day by day,” Mohammed Al-Khulaifi said on Friday.

“We’ve been working continuously in the last days to try to bring the parties together and revive the agreement that has been endorsed by the two sides,” the Qatari minister of state said.

“And we will remain committed to this, in spite of the difficulties,” he added.

“Critiques without any context, such as the ones that we keep hearing from Netanyahu himself, are often just noise,” he added.

Al-Khulaifi rejected recent remarks from Netanyahu to the US-based evangelical Christian channel Daystar that Qatar had promoted “anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism” on US college campuses.

Israeli soldiers have forcibly removed a Palestinian family from their home in the town of Turmus Aya in the occupied West Bank and converted the property into a military outpost, Al Jazeera reports, citing the Wafa news agency.

The Palestinian news agency, citing local sources, said the move comes just three days after Israeli forces created a new outpost on land belonging to the town located in the Ramallah and el-Bireh governorates.