Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 241

Israel continued to bombard the Gaza Strip and battled Hamas as mediators called on both sides to agree to a truce and hostage release deal outlined by US President Joe Biden, AFP reports.

Heavy fighting flared in Gaza’s far-southern Rafah city, where Israel sent tanks and troops in early May, ignoring concerns for displaced civilians there.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on Sunday all 36 of its shelters in Rafah “are now empty”, after at least a million people have fled the city.

Witnesses said Israeli Apache helicopters struck central Rafah on Sunday, also reporting clashes there and air raids and shelling in other parts of the city. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it was “very difficult” to access Rafah because of the Israeli bombardment.

In the besieged territory’s north, Israeli helicopters fired at Gaza City’s Zeitun and Sabra areas, AFP reporters said. A hospital medic said three people were killed when an air strike hit a family apartment in Gaza City’s Daraj district.

And in central Gaza, shelling hit areas of Deir al-Balah and the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps, witnesses said.

The US State Department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called top Israeli officials to discuss a proposed deal for a truce in Gaza, AFP reports.

Blinken spoke with war cabinet minister Benny Gantz and defence minister Yoav Gallant, according to statements.

In both calls, he “commended” Israel for the proposal, which was outlined by US President Joe Biden, and said the onus was on Hamas to agree.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel is “assessing a governing alternative” to Hamas in the Gaza Strip after the bombardment of the Palestinian fighter group ends, AFP reports.

“While we conduct our important military actions, the defence establishment is simultaneously assessing a governing alternative to Hamas,” Gallant said according to a statement from his office.

Meeting troops near the Gaza border, the minister described a “framework” that includes “isolating areas” of Gaza and clearing them of Hamas fighters, “and bringing in other forces that will enable the formation of a governing alternative”.

Gallant said that “the military operation on one hand and creating the potential for a governing alternative on the other will enable us to achieve two of the goals of this war: the removal of Hamas as a governing and military authority in Gaza, and the return of the hostages.”

“We will not accept the rule of Hamas in Gaza at any stage in any process aimed at ending the war,” he said.

Meanwhile, according to Gallant, the military operation in Rafah, launched in early May, was “progressing above and below the ground”.

Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview broadcast he is “disappointed” US President Joe Biden won’t pursue sanctions against the International Criminal Court, as its prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, AFP reports.

Both Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress have pushed to impose sanctions on the court, though the White House has said it would block their legislation.

“The United States said that they would, in fact, in a bipartisan way, back the sanctions bill,” Netanyahu said in an interview on Sirius XM radio, which was recorded on Wednesday — before the latest Gaza truce plan emerged.

“I thought that was still the American position because there was a bipartisan consensus just a few days ago,” he said.

“Now, you say there’s a question mark. And frankly, I’m surprised and disappointed.”

Israel’s foreign ministry has recommended that Israeli citizens not travel to the Maldives after its government banned the entry of visitors with Israeli passports, Reuters reports.

The recommendation, the Israeli ministry said, includes Israelis with dual citizenship.

“For Israeli citizens already in the country, it is recommended to consider leaving, because if they find themselves in distress for any reason, it will be difficult for us to assist,” the ministry said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of protesters packed the main road in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi to denounce the Israeli bombardment of Gaza that has killed over 36,400 people, mostly children and women, Anadolu Agency reports.

Organised by Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the country’s mainstream religiopolitical party, and attended by thousands of women and children as well, the rally was part of the global movement “All Eyes On Rafah.”

Carrying tri-colour Palestinian flags and banners, inscribed with anti-Israel slogans, the protesters started to gather at the Sharea Faisal Road at 4pm from different parts of the city.

It was a hot day as the South Asian country has been in the grip of a severe heat wave, while protesters, many of them wearing the Palestinian scarf “keffiyeh,” kept pouring in.

“Stop Genocide in Gaza” was engraved on the main banner displayed on an overhead bridge, while another was inscribed with “Labbaik ya Aqsa” (Aqsa, we are here) and “Salute to Hamas resistance.”

Read full story here

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby has said that if Hamas agrees to the deal to end the Gaza bombardment, the US expects Israel to also accept the plan, Reuters reports.

“This was an Israeli proposal. We have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal as was transmitted to them, an Israeli proposal then Israel would say yes,” Kirby said in an interview on ABC News’ “This Week” program.

At least 32 people, many of them children, have died of malnutrition in Gaza since the fighting broke out on October 7, AFP reports.

Since then Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 36,439 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry.

But aid agencies warn that the situation is even worse when it comes to children.

On Saturday, the World Health Organisation said that more than four in five children had gone a whole day without eating at least once in 72 hours.

“Children are starving,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said in a statement.

The rise in malnutrition among Gaza’s children is largely a result of humanitarian aid that enters the Palestinian territory not reaching its intended destination, aid agencies said.

Read more here.

US Senator Bernie Sanders has said it was “a very sad day” for the US that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited to address a joint meeting of the Congress.

“Netanyahu is a war criminal. I certainly will not attend,” Bernie said in a post on X.

Ahmed Bayram, spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council, says they have not had “any supplies” make it through the crossings into Gaza for the past month.

“We’re relying on our ever-depleting resources on the ground. It’s nowhere near enough, [we] had big promises of more aid, for [the] safety of our aid workers which my team in Gaza describe as a big fallacy,” Bayram told Al Jazeera.

“The closure of the nine possible potential crossings is a catastrophe […] we hear on a daily basis from our teams that children are sleeping on the sands because there are no tents left, they are drinking unsafe water all day long and they are eating very very little,” he said.

United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani discussed in Abu Dhabi proposals for a ceasefire deal in Gaza that were laid out by US President Joe Biden, the UAE state news agency WAM reported according to Reuters.

The two leaders expressed support for all “serious initiatives and efforts” toward a lasting peace in the region, it said.

Lebanon’s state media has reported that two civilians were killed in an Israeli strike in the south of the country, as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensified, AFP reports.

“Two civilians were killed in an Israeli strike that targeted their home in the village of Houla,” near the border, the National News Agency reported.

A local official told AFP that those killed were “two brothers, shepherds whose house was destroyed.”

Qatar’s foreign ministry has condemned Israel’s move to designate the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) as a “terrorist organisation”, Al Jazeera reports.

In a statement, the ministry called on the international community to stand firm in the face of Israel’s plans to “deprive” Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank of “its necessary services”.

The ministry also reiterated its full support for UNRWA.

An aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirms that Israel has accepted a framework deal advanced by US President Joe Biden for winding down operations in Gaza, though he described it as flawed and in need of much more work, Reuters reports.

In an interview with Britain’s Sunday Times, Ophir Falk, chief foreign policy advisor to Netanyahu, said Biden’s proposal was “a deal we agreed to […] it’s not a good deal but we dearly want the hostages released, all of them”.

“There are a lot of details to be worked out,” he said, adding that Israeli conditions, including “the release of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas as a genocidal terrorist organisation” have not changed.

The first phase of the three-phase plan entails a truce and the return of some hostages held by Hamas, after which the sides would negotiate on an open-ended cessation of hostilities for a second phase in which remaining live captives would go free, Biden said.

Read more here.

The Gaza health ministry has said at least 36,439 people have been killed in the territory during more than seven months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, AFP reports.

The toll includes at least 60 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 82,627 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since October 7.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar received a phone call from Acting Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri, where they discussed the ongoing situation in Gaza.

According to the Foreign Office (FO), the two “discussed the situation in Gaza and unabated Israeli atrocities there”.

Dar reiterated Pakistan’s “full support for all initiatives aimed at ending the genocide in Gaza and for humanitarian relief to the Palestinian people”, the FO said on X.

Israeli forces have assaulted motorcyclists near the Nabi Musa shrine, located southwest of Jericho in the occupied West Bank, and detained a number of them, Wafa news agency reports.

Wafa correspondent, citing eyewitnesses, reported that Israeli forces stopped a group of young men riding motorcycles in the area and brutally attacked them, resulting in injuries to two of them.

He added that the Israeli forces detained several cyclists and took them to a military checkpoint at the southern entrance of Jericho.

Nasser Anani, the director of Jericho Governmental Hospital, told Wafa that the assault resulted in injuries to two young men from the town of Hazma, who were transferred to the hospital with bruises.

Israeli forces have demolished a house in the village of Al-Walaja, northwest of Bethlehem, Wafa news agency reports.

According to Al Jazeera, the village of Al-Walaja is carved into hillside terraces and olive farms between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

Khader Al-Araj, the head of the Al-Walaja Village Council, reported that a large contingent of Israeli soldiers, accompanied by a military bulldozer, broke into the Ain Juwaiza neighbourhood of the village Wafa said.

They proceeded to demolish the home of Ghassan Al-Atrash, a local resident, which measured approximately 120 square meters.

Israel has taken over some 32 per cent of Gaza’s area by “systematically demolishing neighbourhoods” to create a buffer zone and a central axis dividing it, according to Al Jazeera’s Sanad Verification Agency.

This does not include the area of the Philadelphi Corridor on Egypt’s border, which Israel declared it had taken control of on Thursday.

Sanad’s analysis of satellite imagery showed 80-90pc destruction rates in the 120sq.km Israel has taken.

A map constructed by Sanad shows that Gaza’s boundaries have been pushed inward and a 1.5km-wide strip that runs 6.5km across the middle in the Juhor ad-Dik area, known as the Nezarim axis.

The analysis shows that areas in the embattled and besieged strip have been “completely bulldozed and demolished” and that “removal operations took place in a regular pattern” to turn what the UN once called “danger zones” into a buffer zone.

Read more here.

Ophir Falk, a foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has said a “lot of details” were yet to be worked out regarding a Gaza ceasefire deal, Al Jazeera reports.

Speaking to The Sunday Times about the latest ceasefire plan outlined by US President Joe Biden, Falk said “it’s not a good deal but we dearly want the hostages released, all of them”.

He also emphasised that reaching a permanent ceasefire — called for in the deal’s second phase — should be conditional.

“There are a lot of details to be worked out and that includes there will not be a permanent ceasefire until all our objectives are met,” said Falk.