Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 212

The Palestinian fighter group Hamas has claimed responsibility for an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza, which Israeli and Palestinian media reports said had resulted in Israeli casualties.

According to Reuters, Israel’s military said 10 projectiles were launched from Rafah in southern Gaza towards the crossing, which it said was now closed to aid trucks going into the coastal enclave. However, other crossings remain open.

Hamas’ armed wing said it fired rockets at an Israeli army base by the crossing but did not confirm where it fired them from.

Hamas media quoted a source close to the group saying the commercial crossing was not the target.

Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of sabotaging efforts by mediators involved in ongoing talks aimed at a truce and hostage exchange in Gaza, AFP reports.

Qatar-based Haniyeh said Netanyahu wanted to “invent constant justifications for the continuation of aggression, expanding the circle of conflict, and sabotaging efforts made through various mediators and parties”.

The leader of Hamas’s political office said the United States had “provided cover for this occupation, should be the one to stop it instead of supplying it with weapons of destruction and extermination”.

Haniyeh added that Hamas “remains eager to reach a comprehensive and interconnected agreement in stages, ending the aggression, ensuring withdrawal, and achieving a serious prisoner exchange deal”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected Hamas’s demand to end fighting in Gaza in order to reach a ceasefire deal, AFP reports.

“The State of Israel cannot accept this,” he said. “We are not ready to accept a situation in which the Hamas battalions come out of their bunkers, take control of Gaza again, rebuild their military infrastructure, and return to threaten the citizens of Israel,” Netanyahu told the cabinet, according to a statement by his office.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has voted unanimously to close Qatari television network Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel, Reuters reports quoting a government statement, which did not stipulate when the decision might take effect.

The cabinet vote came after Israel’s parliament passed a law allowing the temporary closure in Israel of foreign broadcasters considered to be a threat to national security during the military campaign in Gaza.

At least 34,683 Palestinians have been killed and 78,018 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since Oct 7, the health ministry said, according to Reuters.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Ishaq Dar has expressed deep concern over Israel’s ongoing brutal military onslaught against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, Radio Pakistan reports.

Addressing the 15th Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in The Gambia today, Dar urged its member states to work together for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to the besieged Palestinians.

The deputy premier also expressed Pakistan’s support for Palestine’s admission as a full member of the United Nations, resumption of the peace process for the realisation of the two-state solution and establishment of a viable, contiguous and sovereign State of Palestine on the basis of pre-1967 borders.

Hamas leaders have held a second day of truce talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, with no apparent progress reported as the group maintained its demand that any agreement must end the fighting in Gaza, Reuters reports quoting Palestinian officials.

A Palestinian official close to the mediation effort said the Hamas delegation had arrived in Cairo with a determination to reach a deal “but not at any price”.

“A deal must end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza and Israel hasn’t yet committed it was willing to do so,” the official told Reuters, asking not to be named.

Another Palestinian official told Reuters that the negotiations are “facing challenges because the occupation (Israel) refuses to commit to a comprehensive ceasefire”, but added that the Hamas delegation was still in Cairo in the hope mediators could press Israel to change its position.

Israeli forces have arrested two more Palestinians in the cities of Ramallah and el-Bireh, Al Jazeera reports citing Wafa news agency.

They also severely beat a young man in the Old City of the occupied Jerusalem, the agency said.

There were earlier reports of arrests in Nablus and Hebron.

Clashes had erupted last night between the Israeli forces and Palestinians in the Beit Furik neighbourhood of Nablus, with two injuries reported by Wafa.

The family of a prominent doctor from Gaza, who was reportedly killed in an Israeli prison due to torture, has demanded justice over his death, Al Jazeera reports.

Adnan al-Bursh, 50, head of the orthopaedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, was arrested by the Israeli army last December as he treated patients at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza. His death was confirmed earlier in the week.

Yazan, the eldest son of the doctor, expressed his shock at learning of his father’s fate. “I didn’t know my father had been martyred, it was a shock,” he told Al Jazeera. “Thank God anyway. We belong to God and to Him we return.”

He said that he had been to the Israeli prisons of Negev, Ofer and Ashkelon before he was killed under torture.

Adnan’s wife, Yasmine, explained how the family moved from Jordan to Gaza: “Adnan told me that he was tired of being abroad after 35 years of exile and decided to return to Gaza to serve his people as he always said.”

Both of them called on international organisations to bring justice to the slain doctor.

British-Palestinian doctor and Glasgow university rector Ghassan Abu-Sittah has said he was denied access to France where he was to report on the medical situation in Gaza.

Abu-Sittah said on X, formerly Twitter, that he had been invited to give an account to French senators of his experience as a doctor in Gaza since the Israeli offensive there, but had been blocked at Paris’s Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport.

He had already been stopped from entering Germany last month where he had hoped to attend a “Palestinian Congress” along with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who was also denied access.

“I am at Charles De Gaulle airport. They are preventing me from entering France,” Abu-Sittah said on X. “I am supposed to speak at the French Senate today. They say the Germans put a 1 year ban on my entry to Europe.”

A French police source confirmed that France could not allow the doctor entry because it was bound by a German-issued ban on his entry into the visa-free Schengen zone of which both countries are members.

Scores of Democrats in the US House have urged President Joe Biden to consider halting arms sales to Israel if it does not alter the conduct of its aggression against Hamas.

A letter signed by 88 Democratic members of Congress and delivered to the White House ratchets up pressure on Biden to take a firmer stance toward Israel, a staunch ally.

The lawmakers voiced “serious concerns regarding the Israeli government’s conduct of the war in Gaza as it pertains to the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid”.

Israel’s restrictions on US-backed humanitarian aid delivery in Gaza “have contributed to an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe,” the letter said, citing the US Agency for International Development.

The lawmakers urged Biden to make clear to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that any impediment to aid delivery to Gaza was “risking its eligibility for further offensive security assistance from the United States”. The letter said any US funding halt should not include missile defence systems such as the Iron Dome.

Read more here.

Pro-Palestine protesters briefly disrupted a commencement ceremony at the University of Michigan on Saturday while demonstrators faced off with police at the University of Virginia as US colleges braced for more turmoil during graduation festivities, Reuters reports.

Videos shared on social media showed dozens of students wearing the traditional keffiyeh headdress and graduation caps and waving Palestinian flags as they walked down the centre aisle of Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, among cheers and boos from a crowd of thousands.

The ceremony continued and campus police escorted the protesters toward the back of the stadium, but no arrests were made, according to Colleen Mastony, a spokesperson for the university.

“Peaceful protests like this have taken place at U-M commencement ceremonies for decades,” Mastony said in a statement. “The university supports free speech and expression, and university leaders are pleased that today’s commencement was such a proud and triumphant moment.”

Police have so far arrested over 2,000 protesters at colleges around the country.

The Israeli army said troops killed five Palestinian “terrorists” barricaded in a building during a 12-hour siege in the occupied West Bank, AFP reports.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, reported the death of three fighters, including its Tulkarem chief Alaa Adib.

An AFP photographer saw a heavy military deployment in the village of Deir al-Ghusun, near the northern town of Tulkarem. Troops deployed a bulldozer to flatten a building and carried at least one body out of the rubble, the photographer reported.

Israeli forces “engaged in an extensive 12-hour counterterrorism operation in the Tulkarem area,” the army and the Shin Bet security service said in a joint statement.

The Israeli army said troops had come under fire after entering the village to “neutralise a terrorist cell” and had “retaliated” with “live ammunition, shoulder-fired missiles and other weaponry”. An army drone registered two hits on the building before sappers moved in to “dismantle” it.

Police have arrested at least 25 pro-Palestinian protesters and cleared an encampment at the University of Virginia, the university said in a statement, as US campuses braced for more turmoil during graduation celebrations, Reuters reports.

Tensions flared at UVA’s campus in Charlottesville, where protests had been largely peaceful until Saturday morning, when police officers in riot gear were seen in a video moving on an encampment on the campus’ lawn, cuffing some demonstrators with zip-ties and using what appeared to be chemical spray.

The University of Virginia said in a news release that protesters had violated several university policies including setting up tents on Friday night and using amplified sound.

Jim Ryan, UVA’s president, wrote in a message that officials had learned that “individuals unaffiliated with the university” who presented “some safety concerns” had joined protesters on campus.

Dozens of people were arrested for criminal trespass outside the Art Institute of Chicago at a demonstration on Saturday after the institute called in police to remove protesters it said were illegally occupying its property, the Chicago Police Department said on X.

Talks to strike a Gaza truce were expected to resume Sunday after Hamas rejected any deal that failed to end the offensive in the Palestinian territory and accused Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu of “personally hindering” an agreement, AFP reports.

Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators met a Hamas delegation in Cairo on Saturday and a senior Hamas source close to the negotiations told AFP there would be “a new round” of talks on Sunday.

Each side blamed the other for stalled negotiations, with a senior Hamas official insisting late Saturday that the group would “not agree under any circumstances” to a truce that did not explicitly include a complete end to the offensive, including Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

The official, who asked not to be named, condemned Israeli efforts to secure a hostage-release deal “without linking it to ending the aggression on Gaza”. He accused Netanyahu of “personally hindering” efforts to reach a truce due to “personal interests”.

A top Israeli official said earlier that Hamas was “thwarting the possibility of reaching an agreement” by refusing to give up its demand for an end to the war. Israel has not agreed to any guarantees that the fighting will end, the official told AFP in Jerusalem.

A top Israeli official has said that Hamas’s continued demand for a lasting ceasefire in the fighting in Gaza is stymying prospects of reaching a truce, AFP reports.

“So far, Hamas has not given up its demand to end the war, thus thwarting the possibility of reaching an agreement,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity, after Hamas negotiators returned to Egypt to give their response to a proposed pause in the nearly seven-month conflict.

The chief of the United Nations’ food programme has warned of a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza and reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s offensive against Hamas, AFP reports.

“There is famine, full-blown famine in the north and it’s moving its way south,” Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Programme, said in an interview excerpt published a day ago.

“What we are asking for and what we’ve continually asked for is a ceasefire and the ability to have unfettered access to get in safe … into Gaza — various ports, various gate crossings,” McCain continued.

The World Food Programme is one of the many humanitarian groups trying to get aid into Gaza.

Students at Trinity College Dublin and Lausanne University in Switzerland have staged occupations to protest against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, joining a wave of demonstrations sweeping US campuses, Reuters reports.

In Dublin, students built an encampment on Friday that forced the university to restrict campus access today and close the Book of Kells exhibition, one of Ireland’s top tourist attractions.

The camp was set up after the students’ union said it had been fined 214,000 euros ($230,000) by the university for losses caused by protests in recent months, not exclusively over Gaza. The protesters were demanding that Trinity cut academic ties with Israel and divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Students’ union president Laszlo Molnarfia posted a photograph of benches piled up at the entrance to the building housing the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript created by Celtic monks in about 800 AD.

Trinity College said it had restricted access to students, staff and residents to ensure safety, and that the exhibition would be closed today.

Read more here.

Talks have resumed in Egypt aimed at halting months of fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Israel that have triggered protests around the world, AFP reports.

Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States sat down with a Hamas delegation to hear the group’s response to a proposal that would halt fighting for 40 days and exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners, according to details released by Britain.

A top Israeli official has said Israel will send a delegation to Cairo for talks on a Gaza truce only if it sees a “positive movement” on a framework for a hostage deal, AFP reports.

“What we are looking at is an agreement over a framework for a possible hostage deal,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. “Tough and long negotiations are expected for an actual deal.”

“The indication for positive movement over a framework would be if we send a delegation led by Mossad chief to Cairo,” said the official, who spoke in English.

Israeli forces have killed at least three Palestinians in an overnight raid in a village near the city of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian officials and a Reuters reporter at the scene.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said one of the Palestinians had died on the way to hospital following the raid in Deir al-Ghusun, while a Reuters reporter at the scene saw Israeli forces leave the village with two other bodies.

The Israeli military said it was conducting “counterterrorism activities in the area”.

British-Palestinian doctor and Glasgow University rector Ghassan Abu-Sittah has said he was denied access to France, where he was to report on the medical situation in Gaza, AFP reports.

Abu-Sittah said on X that he had been invited to give an account to French senators of his experience as a doctor in Gaza during the Israeli offensive, but had been blocked at Paris’s Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport.

“I am at Charles De Gaulle airport. They are preventing me from entering France,” Abu-Sittah said on X. “I am supposed to speak at the French Senate today. They say the Germans put a 1-year ban on my entry to Europe.”.

A French police source confirmed to AFP that France could not allow the doctor entry because it was bound by a German-issued ban on his entry into the visa-free Schengen zone, of which both countries are members.

The event that Abu-Sittah had been scheduled to attend was organised by Senator Raymonde Poncet Monge, a Green party member.

Guillaume Gontard, president of the Greens’ Senate group, called the decision to block Abu-Sittah “scandalous”, and said he was negotiating with the interior and foreign ministries to reverse the move.

He added however that the doctor would “probably” be sent back to Britain.

The health ministry in Gaza has said that at least 34,654 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during almost seven months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, AFP reports.

The tally includes at least 32 deaths in the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 77,908 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since October 7.