Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 211

Britain imposed sanctions on two “extremist” groups and four individuals in Israel who it blamed for violence in the West Bank, its latest package of measures against Israeli settlers, Reuters reports.

Britain’s Foreign Office named Hilltop Youth and Lehava as two groups which it said were known to have supported, incited and promoted violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

The four individuals sanctioned were responsible for human rights abuses against these communities, the statement added.

The US military said it was temporarily pausing the offshore construction of a maritime pier because of weather conditions and instead would continue building it at the Israeli port of Ashdod, Reuters reports.

The maritime pier, once built, will be placed off the coast of Gaza in a bid to speed the flow of humanitarian aid into the enclave.

“Forecasted high winds and high sea swells caused unsafe conditions for soldiers working on the surface of the partially constructed pier,” the US military said in a statement.

Ahead of the University of Michigan’s commencement on Saturday, the school has trained staff volunteers in how to mitigate disruptions: a change from the usual duties of guiding guests around campus and showing them to their seats, Reuters reports.

Everyone facilitating the University of Illinois’ commencement the following weekend will have undergone similar special training. At schools like the University of Southern California and Cal Poly Humboldt in Northern California, leaders have canceled or moved key events off campus altogether.

Yemen’s Houthis will target ships heading to Israeli ports in any area that is within their range, military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a televised speech, Reuters reports.

“We will target any ships heading to Israeli ports in the Mediterranean Sea in any area we are able to reach,” he said.

Turkish exporters with firm orders are looking at ways to send their goods to Israel via third countries after Turkey halted bilateral trade, four export company owners told Reuters, saying the decision had caught them by surprise.

Trade Minister Omer Bolat said that Turkey will not resume trade with Israel, worth around $7 billion a year, until a permanent ceasefire is secured in the crisis in Gaza with unhindered humanitarian aid flowing to Palestinians there.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Israeli ground assault in Rafah will cause casualties “beyond what’s acceptable”, AFP reports.

“Absent such a plan, we can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah because the damage it would do is beyond what’s acceptable,” Blinken told the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum in Arizona, the AFP news agency reports.

Blinken also said that Israel has not yet presented a plan to protect civilians during its promised ground operation against the city in southern Gaza.

Dozens of Democratic lawmakers in the US have written a letter to President Joe Biden saying that ongoing Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid entering Gaza “call into question” their compliance with US law, Al Jazeera reports.

The 86 members of the House of Representatives said they believe there is sufficient evidence that Israel is failing to comply with a US Foreign Assistance Act provision, which requires recipients of US-funded arms to uphold international humanitarian law, as well as allow the free flow of US assistance.

“We expect the administration to ensure [Israel’s] compliance with existing law and to take all conceivable steps to prevent further humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza,” the letter said.

Ryan, a student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and pro-Palestine protester, told how police had – unprovoked – hit him with their batons as they cleared a peaceful Gaza solidarity encampment on the university’s campus.

“The school [would] rather physically intimidate their students … than even consider divestment, and that is what’s so frustrating. We didn’t do anything wrong,” Ryan told Al Jazeera.

“I received a [police] citation for unlawful assembly, and I’m proud of that,” he added.

Students at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) have established a Gaza solidarity encampment on their campus to demand the iconic Irish university cut ties with Israel, Al Jazeera reports.

“Trinity College Dublin tonight, after students set up an encampment for Palestine, demanding that their university cut ties with Israel as per BDS principles supported by the vast majority of students and staff,” the college’s student union president Laszlo Molnarfi said in a post on social media.

Video footage of the encampment shows tents pitched on a grass lawn near a library where the Book of Kells — a 9th-century manuscript and one of the country’s most visited tourist attractions — is housed. The protesters also placed wooden benches in the doorway entrance of the library, saying the location was “now closed indefinitely”.

Northern Gaza is now in “full-blown famine” mode, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) executive director Cindy McCain stated.

“It’s horror,” McCain told the US television network NBC’s Meet the Press in an interview, which will be broadcast on Sunday.

“There is famine – full-blown famine – in the north, and it’s moving its way south,” McCain said in the interview, according to The Associated Press news agency.

McCain also highlighted that a ceasefire and a greatly increased flow of aid through land and sea routes was essential to stave off a growing humanitarian catastrophe for Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

Samira Ali, a student protest organiser at Goldsmiths, University of London, said their Gaza solidarity activism has been ongoing for six months and has won important concessions from the university’s management.

“It’s involved protests and walkouts, actions which have included occupations,” Ali told Al Jazeera.

“We are currently in an occupation of the library.

“One of the most seminal things we’ve won is the Palestinian scholarships. Now, this university will provide two extra Palestinian scholarships and one of them will include an undergraduate scholarship.

“We think this is really important considering the total destruction of educational infrastructure in Gaza.

“One of the lecture theatres that we were occupying, we have won that it is going to be renamed after Shireen Abu Akleh [the Al Jazeera journalist killed in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces].

“To have that recognition of a Palestinian journalist that was murdered by the [Israeli military] and have that memorialised at this university will be amazing and something we are really proud of.”

US Senator Bernie Sanders has told members of the student-led, pro-Palestine movement at college campuses that they are “on the right side of history”, Al Jazeera reports.

“In 1962, we organised sit-ins to end racist policies at the University of Chicago. In ’63, I was arrested protesting segregated schools,” he wrote in a post on X.

“But we were right. I’m proud to see students protesting the war in Gaza. Stay peaceful and focused,” he added.

Israeli forces in northern Gaza come under Palestinian mortar and rocket fire at least four times over a monitoring period between Thursday and Friday, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) report.

The Netzarim Corridor – a military highway built by the Israelis to dissect the Gaza Strip north from south – was again the scene of Palestinian attacks with Hamas fighters deploying the “Rajum” multi-rocket launcher platform against Israeli forces deployed on the military route.

Hamas said its delegation was heading to Cairo to resume Gaza truce talks, as the United Nations warned that Israel’s threatened assault on the city of Rafah could produce a “bloodbath”, AFP reports.

Foreign mediators have been waiting for the Palestinian militant group to respond to a proposal to halt fighting for 40 days and exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

“The only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire is Hamas,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday.

Blinken on Friday also reiterated Washington’s objections to the long-threatened Rafah offensive, saying Israel has not presented a plan to protect the civilians sheltering there.

“Absent such a plan, we can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah because the damage it would do is beyond what’s acceptable,” he said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Hamas was the only holdup to a Gaza ceasefire as the militants prepared to send a delegation back to Cairo on Saturday for talks, AFP reports.

“We wait to see whether, in effect, they can take yes for an answer on the ceasefire and release of hostages,” Blinken said late Friday at the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum in Arizona.

“The reality in this moment is the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire is Hamas. “

Students at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) have established a Gaza solidarity encampment on their campus to demand the iconic Irish university cut ties with Israel, Al Jazeera reports.

“Trinity College Dublin tonight, after students set up an encampment for Palestine, demanding that their university cut ties with Israel as per BDS principles supported by the vast majority of students and staff,” the college’s student union president Laszlo Molnarfi said in a post on social media.

Video footage of the encampment shows tents pitched on a grass lawn near a library where the Book of Kells — a 9th-century manuscript and one of the country’s most visited tourist attractions — is housed. The protesters also placed wooden benches in the doorway entrance of the library, saying the location was “now closed indefinitely”.

“No business as usual during a genocide,” Molnarfi wrote on social media, and called on the university’s administration to “cut ties with the genocidal state of Israel”.

A further 54 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces between Wednesday and Friday afternoon in the Gaza Strip and more than 100 were injured, according to the latest UN flash assessment, which reports aid officials warning of catastrophe should Israel invade Rafah, Al Jazeera reports.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also reports that Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, is facing continued restrictions from Israel on bringing much-needed medical equipment into Gaza.

“From ultrasound scanners to external defibrillators, generators, and intravenous sodium chloride solutions that are essential for rehydrating patients and diluting drugs. According to MSF, such requests have been repeatedly rejected by Israeli authorities,” OCHA reports.

Between April 27 and Thursday, just eight out of 23 humanitarian aid missions to northern Gaza were facilitated by Israeli authorities, 12 (52 percent) were impeded, two missions were denied, and one mission was cancelled, according to the UN.

A US official has said that other officials believe there has been some progress in Gaza hostage talks in Cairo but are still waiting to hear more, Reuters reports.

A top Hamas official has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to derail a proposed Gaza truce and hostage release deal with his threats to keep fighting the group AFP reports.

“Netanyahu was the obstructionist of all previous rounds of dialogue … and it is clear that he still is,” senior Hamas official Hossam Badran told AFP by telephone.

A delegation from Hamas will visit Cairo on Saturday, a Hamas official has told Reuters, amid expectations that they will deliver a written response to an Israeli proposal on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release.

The Hamas official, who declined to be identified, spoke after CIA Director William Burns arrived in the Egyptian capital for meetings about the conflict in Gaza, according to an Egyptian security source and three sources at Cairo airport.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that an Israeli military ground assault into Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where humanitarian aid groups estimate 1.2 million Palestinians are sheltering, could end in a “bloodbath”, AFP reports.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of possible dire implications.

“WHO is deeply concerned that a full-scale military operation in Rafah, Gaza, could lead to a bloodbath, and further weaken an already broken health system,” Tedros said on X.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkiye’s move to halt trade with Israel is designed to force the country to a ceasefire over Gaza, AFP reports.

“We have taken some measures to force Israel to agree to a ceasefire and increase the amount of humanitarian aid to enter” Gaza, Erdogan told a group of businessmen in Istanbul.

“We will oversee the consequences of this step we have taken in coordination and consultation with our business world.”

“We do not run after hostility or conflict in our region,” said Erdogan.

“We do not want to see conflict, blood or tears in our geography.

“We know now that we did the right thing.”

An Egyptian security source and three sources at Cairo airport have said that CIA Director William Burns has arrived in the Egyptian capital for meetings about the conflict in Gaza, Reuters reports.

The CIA declined to comment, reflecting its policy of not disclosing the director’s travel.

US forces have moved construction of a temporary pier for Gaza aid deliveries from an offshore area to the Israeli port of Ashdod due to high seas and winds, AFP reports.

“Yesterday, US Central Command temporarily paused offshore assembly of the floating pier in the vicinity of Gaza due to sea state considerations,” the military command said in a statement.

“Forecasted high winds and high sea swells caused unsafe conditions for Soldiers working on the surface of the partially constructed pier,” it said.

“The partially built pier and military vessels involved in its construction have moved to the Port of Ashdod, where assembly will continue, and will be completed prior to the emplacement of the pier in its intended location when sea states subside.”