Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 225

Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commit to an agreed vision for the Gaza conflict that would include stipulating who might rule the territory after the fighting with Hamas, Reuters reports.

In a news conference, Gantz said he wanted the war cabinet to form a six-point plan by June 8.

If his expectations are not met, Gantz said, he would withdraw his centrist party from the conservative premier’s emergency government.

The Israeli military has said that its forces operating in the Gaza Strip recovered the body of Ron Binyamin, who was among 252 people seized by Hamas, Reuters reports.

Chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Binyamin was found along with three other slain hostages whose repatriation was announced on Friday.

German-Israeli Shani Louk’s father has said that finally laying his daughter to rest will be a gift after her body was recovered from Gaza, months after she was killed in Hamas’ October 7, Reuters reports.

Louk, a 23-year-old tattoo artist, was celebrating with friends at the Nova music festival just inside Israel before it was attacked by gunmen from the Palestinian fighter group.

Nissim Louk said that to be sure, he had viewed photos.

“We also saw the tattoos on her hands,” he said.

“Now she will have her own place next to us and we can go there whenever we want. And she can rest.”

He said the funeral will be held on Sunday, which is Ricarda Louk’s birthday.

“I think Shani said ‘Let’s give my mother a birthday present and let’s go back and be close to her’,” he added.

Having Shani’s grave nearby would be a comfort, said Ricarda Louk.

“Maybe we’ll find more peace,” she said.

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Israeli troops and tanks have pushed into parts of a congested northern Gaza Strip district that they had previously skirted in the more than seven-month-old conflict, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, Reuters reports.

Israel’s forces also took over some ground in Rafah, a southern city next to the Egyptian border that is packed with displaced people and where the launch this month of a long-threatened incursion to crush Hamas hold-outs has alarmed Cairo and Washington.

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The Commission for Detainees’ Affairs has said its lawyers were able to visit three detainees in Ramon prison, in southeast Israel, who accused prison authorities of neglecting their illnesses and dire health conditions, Al Jazeera reports.

Mohammed Tous and Murad Abu Alrub, who are serving life in prison, and Taher Saleh, who has been in administrative detention for the past four years, have said that Israeli authorities are carrying out “systematic negligence of detainees, including withholding medicine, leaving them to fall victim to illnesses”.

Tous, who has been in prison since 1985, told lawyers he has not witnessed this kind of mistreatment since his detention about 40 years ago. He confirmed to the commission’s legal team that his already poor vision deteriorated after prison authorities suspended his treatment since October 7.

Alrub spoke about the spread of skin diseases among detainees due to the lack of sanitisers and cleaning supplies, in addition to the lack of clothes and bed linens.

Saleh, who became paralysed on his left side while in prison and is unable to walk or use the toilet independently, said he is being denied transfer to a hospital, despite the prison doctor’s recommendation for him to receive treatment at one.

“The commission warns of an escalation in the medical crimes that threaten the lives of hundreds of sick detainees,” it said in a statement, adding that international intervention by rights and legal groups is needed.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society has said that Al Amal Hospital in Khan Younis conducted four specialised eye surgeries as part of ongoing efforts to reactivate the hospital’s services after repeated targeting by occupation forces rendered it out of service.

In a post on X, the agency said that the surgeries were performed by the hospital’s medical team with support from the UNRWA agency.

New divisions have emerged among Israel’s leaders over Gaza’s governance, with an unexpected Hamas fightback in parts of the Palestinian territory piling pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, AFP reports.

Netanyahu came under personal attack from Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for failing to rule out an Israeli government in Gaza after the conflict.

The Israeli premier’s outright rejection of post-conflict Palestinian leadership in Gaza has broken a rift among top politicians wide open and frustrated relations with its top ally the United States.

Experts say the lack of clarity only serves to benefit Hamas, whose leader has insisted no new authority can be established in the territory without its involvement.

“Without an alternative to fill the vacuum, Hamas will continue to grow,” International Crisis Group analyst Mairav Zonszein told AFP.

Emmanuel Navon, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, echoed this sentiment.

“If only Hamas is left in Gaza, of course they are going to appear here and there and the Israeli army will be forced to chase them around,” said Navon.

“Either you establish an Israeli military government or an Arab-led government.”

Austria will release funds to the UN’s Palestinian relief organisation UNRWA that were blocked after allegations agency staff were involved in the October 7 attacks on Israel, Reuters reports.

“After a thorough analysis of the action plan, we will release funds to UNRWA again,” the Austrian foreign ministry said.

Funds totalling $3.70 million have been budgeted for 2024, with the first payment due to be made in the summer, it added.

Arguments and tensions are inevitable in modern society and should not be brushed under the carpet, Pope Francis said, warning that trying to impose a uniform vision fostered frustration and violence, Reuters reports.

Addressing a peace gathering in a Roman amphitheatre in the northern Italian city of Verona, the pope said people needed to learn how to deal with conflict before it got out of hand, but also recognise that holding different opinions was healthy.

“A society without conflicts is a dead society. A society that hides conflicts is a suicidal society. A society that takes conflicts by the hand is a society of the future,” the pope told some 12,500 people gathered in the ancient arena.

“The flaw of dictatorships is not admitting plurality,” he added.

Francis said the world was assailed by wars, but added that ordinary people had to try to build bridges and avoid being dragged into armed conflict at the behest of their leaders.

“Ideologies have no feet to walk, no hands to heal wounds, no eyes to see the sufferings of others. Peace is made with the feet, hands, and eyes of the people involved,” he said.

Underscoring the pope’s hopes for personal reconciliation, an Israeli man, whose parents died in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, embraced on the Verona stage a Palestinian peace activist whose brother had died in an Israeli jail.

“I don’t think there are any words to add to this,” the pope said, leading the applause for their gesture.

“Don’t stop. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t become spectators of so-called ‘inevitable’ wars,” he told his audience.

At least eight people, including women and children, were killed and 10 were wounded after Israeli artillery targeted a group of Palestinians filling water containers west of the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

“We were displaced to the Faluja area, which is considered a safe area, and suddenly this place was shelled by the Israelis. We do not know where to go,” a witness said.

Video footage shared online and verified by Al Jazeera showed how the attack turned the area into a pool of blood, as well as the impact of shrapnel on shops and homes at the site of the bombing.

At least 35,386 Palestinians have been killed and 79,366 have been wounded in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza since October 7, Reuters reports quoting the Gaza health ministry.

Austria has said it will restore its funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees after suspending it over allegations that staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks, AFP reports.

“After analysing the action plan in detail” submitted by UNRWA “to improve the functioning of the organisation”, Austria has decided to “release the funds,” its foreign ministry said in a statement.

A total of 3.4 million euros ($3.7 million) in funds have been budgeted for 2024, and the first payment is expected to be made in the summer, the statement said.

“Some of the Austrian funds will be used in the future to improve internal control mechanisms at UNRWA,” it added.

Austria said it will “closely monitor” the implementation of the action plan with other international partners, noting that “a lot of trust had been squandered”.

The Alpine country said it has substantially increased support for the suffering Palestinian population in Gaza and the region since 7 October, making 32 million euros ($34.8 million) in humanitarian aid available to other international aid organisations.

The 35 American and other international doctors came to besieged Gaza in volunteer teams to help one of the territory’s few hospitals still functioning.

They brought suitcases full of medical supplies and had trained for one of the worst war zones in the world. They knew the health care system was decimated and overwhelmed.

The reality is even worse than they imagined, they say.

Children with horrific amputations. Patients with burns and maggot-filled wounds. Rampant infections. Palestinian doctors and nurses who are beyond exhausted after seven months of treating never-ending waves of civilians wounded in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.

“I did not expect that (it) will be that bad,” said Dr. Ammar Ghanem, an ICU specialist from Detroit with the Syrian American Medical Society. “You hear the news, but you cannot really recognise … how bad until you come and see it.”

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Thirteen people injured by Israeli attacks on Jabalia refugee camp have been taken to the nearby al-Awda Hospital, Al Jazeera reports.

Israeli forces have waged intense air strikes and pressed on with ground operations in Jabalia camp, where many residents remain trapped.

At least 20 Palestinians were detained in pre-dawn Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.

Many of those detained were workers from Gaza who were staying in the Palestinian village of Barta’a, west of Jenin, and the separation barrier.

Close to dawn, Israeli forces raided the refugee camp of Balata, east of Nablus. Residents said Israeli forces were seen mapping roads and filming several areas in the camp.

Other raids targeted Qusra and Burqa villages near Nablus as well as Qalqilya and Beit Ummar town north of Hebron.

A crude oil tanker was hit by a missile off the coast of Yemen’s rebel-held city of Mokha overlooking the strategic Bab al-Mandeb strait, maritime security firm Ambrey has said, AFP reports.

“A Panama-flagged crude oil tanker was reportedly ‘attacked’” about 10 nautical miles southwest of Mokha, Ambrey said, adding that information “indicated the vessel was hit by a missile and that there was a fire in the steering gear flat”.

The British navy’s maritime security agency had earlier said it received a report of a vessel “sustaining slight damage after being struck by an unknown object”.

“The vessel and crew are safe and continuing to its next port of call,” United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) added.

It said the incident occurred 76 nautical miles (140 kilometres) off Yemen’s Hodeidah, without specifying the type of vessel involved.

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who control much of Yemen, have launched dozens of attacks on vessels in and around the Red Sea since November in a campaign they say is in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

The rebel attacks have prompted reprisal strikes by US and British forces and the formation of an international coalition to protect the vital shipping lanes through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah, Gaza, confirms about 90 trucks filled with humanitarian aid were loaded at the temporary pier at Gaza City’s shore yesterday.

Those trucks made their way to UNRWA warehouses inside Deir el-Balah. Priority will be given to evacuation centres in central Gaza, including Deir el-Balah, Khan Younis, al-Mawasi evacuation zone, and hospitals that are still operational.

Reaching hospitals in Rafah will require high-level coordination, as Israel’s military continues to pound the city.

The aid delivery has been perceived as an important step, likely to relieve some of the widespread suffering. However, it should not be a replacement for all the land crossings … which are more equipped and more efficient.

Ninety trucks a day is not nearly enough to feed and respond to the needs of displaced Palestinians.

Martin Griffiths, the UN’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, says all predictions about the catastrophic consequences of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah are “coming true”.

In a post on X, Griffiths — who has long warned of the fallout should Rafah’s population of displaced people face a military onslaught — said there is “almost no food left and humanitarian efforts are stuck”.

“The world has lost its way and needs to return to the norms we created,” he said.

In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Griffiths said famine in Gaza was an “immediate, clear and present danger”.

“Facts on the ground tell us we don’t need to be scientists to see the consequence of the removal of food,” he said.

The Israeli military said on Saturday it killed a senior Palestinian militant during an air strike on an “operations centre” in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, AFP reports.

“A number of significant terrorists were inside the compound,” the Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement posted to Telegram.

It said the strike by a fighter jet and helicopter killed Islam Khamayseh, a “senior terrorist operative in the Jenin Camp” who was responsible for a series of attacks in the area.

The Al-Quds Brigade, the armed wing of militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, confirmed in a statement that Khamayseh was killed and several others wounded during an Israeli raid on Friday night.

It said Khamayseh was a leader of the Jenin Battalion, which is affiliated with Islamic Jihad.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said one person was killed and eight were wounded and receiving hospital treatment as a result of Israel’s operation in Jenin on Friday night.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will travel on Saturday to Saudi Arabia for talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and will visit Israel on Sunday to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Reuters reports.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that Sullivan will stress in his talks with the Israelis the need to go after Hamas fighters in Gaza in a targeted way, not with a full-scale assault on the southern city of Gaza.

Kirby said Sullivan in his talks with the Saudis will discuss “bilateral and regional matters including the war in Gaza of course and ongoing efforts to achieve lasting peace and security in the region.”

Sources say the Biden administration and Saudi Arabia are finalizing an agreement for US security guarantees and civilian nuclear assistance, even as an Israel-Saudi normalization deal envisioned as part of a Middle East “grand bargain” remains elusive.

Kirby said Sullivan’s talks with Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials will include Rafah. Israel has threatened a broad offensive in Rafah but the operation is opposed by the United States out of concerns for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled there to get out of the way of fighting elsewhere in Gaza.

Kirby said Sullivan will argue for a more targeted approach against Hamas fighters in Rafah. He also said Sullivan will discuss recent stalled efforts to reach a deal with Hamas on the release of sick, elderly and wounded hostages held since the militants seized hostages in southern Israel on Oct 7.

Israeli strikes on southern and eastern Lebanon killed at least five people on Friday including two children, security sources and UNICEF said, Reuters reports.

Other Lebanese factions as well as Palestinian groups have also fired rockets at Israel from Lebanon.

On Friday, a series of Israeli strikes on a coastal town further north than the usual conflict area killed a Hezbollah member as well as two Syrian civilians, the security sources said. UNICEF Lebanon separately said two children were killed in an Israeli strike on Friday.

A separate Israeli strike on Majdal Anjar, on Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria, killed Sharhabil al-Sayed, a member of Palestinian armed group Hamas who was in charge of the faction’s operations in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, according to two security sources. The strike also killed another Palestinian Hamas member, the sources said.

The Israeli military said its forces struck a Hezbollah launcher and military infrastructure in southern Lebanon and confirmed the death of al-Sayed.

It said sirens warning of incoming rockets and hostile aircraft sounded in several communities throughout Friday and at one point identified 75 launches crossing from Lebanon into Israel. It said dozens of the launches were intercepted and there were no immediate reports of deaths or damage.

The United States on Friday evacuated out of Gaza 17 American doctors who had been stuck since an Israeli takeover of the Rafah crossing closed the border with Egypt, official sources said, AFP reports.

US diplomats arranged for the 17 doctors to leave instead through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel.

“Some of the US citizen doctors who had been stuck in Gaza have now safely departed and made their way to safety with assistance from the US embassy in Jerusalem,” a State Department spokesperson said.

“We have been in close contact with the groups that these US doctors are part of, and we have been in contact with the families of these US citizens,” he said.

A source familiar with the operation said that three other US citizen doctors who were part of the volunteer medical mission chose to stay despite the uncertainty on when they will again have a chance to leave.

The Rafah crossing into Egypt has been the main gateway for goods and people entering Gaza. It has been closed since Israel on May 7 said it had seized the border post from Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put the onus on Egypt to reopen the crossing.

Egypt has accused Israel in turn of denying responsibility for a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and says that truck drivers and aid workers do not feel safe crossing through an Israeli checkpoint into Gaza.

Israeli forces battled Hamas fighters in the narrow alleyways of Jabalia in northern Gaza on Friday in some of the fiercest engagements since they returned to the area a week ago, while in the south militants attacked tanks massing around Rafah, Reuters reports.

Residents said Israeli armour had thrust as far as the market at the heart of Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, and that bulldozers were demolishing homes and shops in the path of the advance.

“Tanks and planes are wiping out residential districts and markets, shops, restaurants, everything. It is all happening before the one-eyed world,” Ayman Rajab, a resident of western Jabalia, said via a chat app.

At the southern end of Gaza, thick smoke rose over Rafah, bordering Egypt, where an escalating Israeli assault has sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from what was one of the few remaining places of refuge.

“People are terrified and they’re trying to get away,” Jens Laerke, UN humanitarian office spokesperson, said in Geneva, adding that most were following orders to move north towards the coast but that there were no safe routes or destinations.

Hamas has issued a statement saying the US-built pier off the Gaza Strip is no alternative to opening all land crossings under Palestinian supervision, adding that it rejects any military presence on Palestinian land, Reuters reports.