Israel’s deadly siege of Gaza Strip enters seventh month after Hamas’ Oct 7 attack
UN says half of Gaza population experiencing “catastrophic” hunger as threat of famine looms
72pc of enclave’s residential buildings destroyed, reconstruction to cost up to $40bn
Hamas studying 40-day truce proposal as fears of Rafah invasion persist
Alarm in Israel at possible ICC legal action over Gaza atrocities
Hundreds of people protesting Israel’s onslaught on Gaza rallied at one of Australia’s top universities on Friday demanding it divest from companies with ties to Israel, in a movement inspired by the student occupations sweeping US campuses, Reuters reports.
Pro-Palestinian activists set up an encampment last week outside the sandstone main hall at University of Sydney, one of Australia’s largest tertiary institutions.
Similar camps have sprung up at universities in Melbourne, Canberra and other Australian cities.
Unlike in the US, where police have forcibly removed scores of defiant pro-Palestinian protesters at several colleges, protest sites in Australia have been peaceful with scant police presence.
On Friday, protesters rallied to demand University of Sydney divest from companies with ties to Israel, echoing calls from students in the US, Canada and France.
Standing in the chanting crowd of more than 300 with his two-year old son on his shoulders, Matt, 39, said he came to show it was not just students angry at Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“Once you understand what is going on you have a responsibility to try and get involved and raise awareness and show solidarity,” he told Reuters, declining to give his last name.
Several hundred metres away from the Sydney university protest and separated by lines of security guards, hundreds gathered under Australian and Israeli flags to hear speakers say the pro-Palestinian protests made Jewish students and staff feel unsafe on campus.
“There’s no space for anybody else, walking through campus chanting ‘Intifada’ and ‘from the river to the sea’ it does something, it’s scary,” said Sarah, an academic who declined to give her name for fear of repercussions.
University of Sydney vice chancellor Mark Scott told local media on Thursday the pro-Palestinian encampment could stay on campus in part because there was not the violence seen in the US.
While several police cars were parked at the entrance to the university, no police were present at either protest.
Long a stalwart ally of Israel, Australia has become increasingly critical of its conduct in Gaza, where an Australian aid worker was killed in an Israeli attack last month.
Pro-Palestinian protesters said the government had not done enough to push for peace and led the crowd in chants against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his government.
An Israeli incursion into Rafah would put the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza at risk and be an incredible blow to the humanitarian operations of the entire enclave, according to a spokesman for the UN humanitarian office, Al Jazeera reports.
“It could be a slaughter of civilians and an incredible blow to the humanitarian operation in the entire strip because it is run primarily out of Rafah,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian office, at a Geneva press briefing.
Aid operations out of Rafah include medical clinics and food distribution points, such as centres for malnourished children, he added.
In a statement marking World Press Freedom Day, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has issued a reminder that 53 Palestinian journalists are currently detained by Israeli forces, Al Jazeera reports.
Forty-three of the journalists were detained following October 7, the group said, including four who have been deemed “forcibly disappeared” because Israel has provided no information about their status or whereabouts.
“The targeting of Palestinian journalists has been and remains one of the most prominent policies pursued by the occupation throughout its history,” said the Prisoner’s Society.
The death toll from an overnight air strike on a home in northern Rafah has now risen to seven, with four of the victims being children, reports Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abou Azzoum from the southern Gaza district.
Elsewhere in Rafah, especially to the east, there has been a “surge in air strikes and artillery bombardment,” said Abou Azzoum
Israeli military attacks have also intensified in parts of northern Gaza, such as Sheikh Ijlin neighbourhood, as well as central Gaza, where eyewitnesses say there is “constant intensive artillery bombardment”, according to Abou Azzoum.
“A number of casualties have been transferred to al-Aqsa Hospital,” he said.
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor’s office has called for an end to what it called intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the world’s permanent war crimes court, Reuters reports.
In the statement posted on social media platform X, the ICC prosecutor’s office said all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials must cease immediately. It added that the Rome Statute, which outlines the ICC’s structure and areas of jurisdiction, prohibits these actions.
The statement, which named no specific cases, followed Israeli and American criticism of the ICC’s investigation into alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s military operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Neither Israel nor the US are members of the court and do not recognise its jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories.
An Israeli man held hostage in Gaza since the October 7 attack by Hamas has been confirmed dead, AFP reports, quoting the Israeli government and the kibbutz where he had lived.
Dror Or, 49, is the latest hostage to have been confirmed dead by Israel after being captured during the Hamas attack.
“We are heartbroken to share that Dror Or, who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, had been confirmed as murdered and his body is being held in Gaza,” the Israeli government said on X.
Israel estimates that 129 captives seized during the attack remain in Gaza. The military says 35 of them are dead, including Or.
Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it will assist Or’s family. Neither the forum nor the Israeli government said how they learned of Or’s death.
The settlers have reached Jabal al-Arma, a hill on the outskirts of the Palestinian town of Beita in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reports.
Within the town of Beita, sirens have gone off warning residents of a potential settler attack, according to Wafa.
Israeli settlers, sometimes given cover by Israeli security forces, have intensified assaults on Palestinian towns during the onslaught on Gaza, waging more than 800 attacks that have caused casualties or property damage, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
A group of 47 nongovernmental and humanitarian organisations sent a letter to US President Joe Biden highlighting the profound risks to the civilian population of Gaza’s Rafah city from an Israeli ground assault.
The joint letter states that no credible humanitarian plan can feasibly ensure the safety of the estimated 1.3 million people currently sheltering in Rafah.
“Displaced Palestinians in Rafah are effectively trapped with no safe alternatives. Many of them are too young, elderly, sick, starving, injured, or disabled to move again,” the letter states.
“Even in the absence of further military escalation, overcrowded conditions, the near total collapse of sanitation infrastructure, the spread of disease, and a dire scarcity of food, water, and medicine in Rafah could kill thousands more by August,” it adds.
The letter ends with a call for Biden to use all the influence of his administration to “prevent such an operation occurring in order to avoid further catastrophic loss of civilian lives”.
Paris’ Sciences Po university was closed for the day after a debate between the institute’s leadership and students on the onslaught in Gaza failed to ease tensions, prompting protesters to occupy it overnight, Reuters reports.
The elite political sciences university this week became the centre of a wave of protests at several schools in France over the war and academic ties with Israel, although not on the same scale as seen in the United States.
A group of around 70 students were occupying Sciences Po’s main buildings in central Paris on Friday morning after having spent the night there, Jack, one of the protesters, told Reuters in a text message, adding: “By the way, the negotiations with leadership are making no progress.”
Sciences Po did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Local newspaper Le Parisien and radio France Inter, citing an internal memo, reported the university was asking staff to work from home as university buildings were closed.
Sciences Po’s director on Thursday rejected demands by protesters to review the schools’ relations with Israeli universities, prompting protesters to continue their movement with at least one person entering a hunger strike, according to a student speaking on behalf of the protesters.
Dozens of pro-Palestinian students from Mexico’s largest university have camped out in solidarity with similar protests that have swept colleges in the United States, AFP reports.
Mounting flags and chanting “Long live free Palestine,” the protesters set up tents in front of the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) head office in Mexico City.
The students called on the Mexican government to break diplomatic and commercial ties with Israel.
“We are here to support Palestine, the people who are in Palestine, and the student camps in the United States,” said Valentino Pino, a 19-year-old philosophy student.
Jimena Rosas, 21, said she hoped the protest would have a domino effect and spread to other universities in the country. “Once people see that UNAM is beginning to mobilize, other universities should start as well,” she said.
Turkey has halted trade with Israel as it again accused the country of stoking a “humanitarian disaster” in Gaza, marking the latest sign of deepening tensions between the two nations, Financial Times reports.
Ankara’s trade ministry late on Thursday said all export and import transactions related to Israel had been stopped and would not resume until Tel Aviv “allows an uninterrupted and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza”.
Ankara in April sanctioned exports in 54 important categories of goods but this latest move will disrupt bilateral trade worth more than $7bn a year. A Turkish official described the curbs as a temporary measure meant to put pressure on Israel, but said they could also be reversed if Ankara’s conditions were met.
Israel Katz, Israeli foreign minister, said earlier in the day, following a Bloomberg report that Ankara had cut off trade, that he had urgently instructed officials to “create alternatives for trade with Turkiye”.
“This is how a dictator behaves, disregarding the interests of the Turkish people and businessmen, and ignoring international trade agreements,” Katz wrote on X, referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Read more here.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Thursday he did not see any indication Hamas was planning any attack on US troops in Gaza but added adequate measures were being put in place for the safety of military personnel, Reuters reports.
“I don’t discuss intelligence information at the podium. But I don’t see any indications currently that there is an active intent to do that,” Austin said during a press briefing.
“Having said that … this is a combat zone and a number of things can happen, and a number of things will happen.”
A maritime pier constructed by the US military to speed the flow of humanitarian aid in Gaza should be open within a matter of days, despite poor weather hampering preparations, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday.
The United States has called on both Israel and Hamas to ensure that aid bound for civilians in Gaza is not disrupted, after a shipment from Jordan was attacked by Israeli settlers and subsequently diverted by Palestinian fighters.
Gaza’s journalists have been named the winners of the 2024 Unesco/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize for their coverage of Israel’s onslaught on the Palestinian territory, the UN’s cultural agency said in a statement.
Established in 1997, the annual prize “honours an outstanding contribution to the defence and/or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world, especially when this has been achieved in the face of danger”, Unesco said.
“In these times of darkness and hopelessness, we wish to share a strong message of solidarity and recognition to those Palestinian journalists who are covering this crisis in such dramatic circumstances,” said Mauricio Weibel, chair of the international jury of media professionals, who recommended the winners of the prize.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said on May 1 that, according to preliminary investigations, at least 97 journalists and media workers are among the more than 35,000 killed since the onslaught on Gaza began on October 7.
The dead included 92 Palestinian, two Israeli, and three Lebanese journalists.
The Israeli military has bombed a house in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, killing six people, the Wafa news agency reports.
Several more people have been wounded in the attack, which struck the city’s al-Zuhur neighbourhood.
Several people have also been injured after an Israeli bomb struck a house in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood, west of Rafah, while nine people were injured in a bombing targeting the Bureij camp in central Gaza.
US President Joe Biden insisted on Thursday that “order must prevail” on college campuses after weeks of turmoil, clashes with police and mass arrests involving student protests against Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, AFP reports.
Biden, who had remained tight-lipped as the student unrest expanded, spoke just hours after hundreds of police moved in to forcibly clear a sprawling encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, tearing down barriers and detaining more than 200 protestors.
“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” Biden, who has faced criticism from all sides of the political spectrum over the demonstrations, said in a televised statement from the White House.
“But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society, and order must prevail,” he added.
Police forcibly removed scores of defiant pro-Palestinian protesters at several colleges on Thursday, including taking down an encampment at UCLA in a jarring scene that underscored the heightened chaos that has erupted at universities this week, Reuters reports.
In the pre-dawn hours, helmeted police swarmed a tent city set up at the University of California in Los Angeles, using flash bangs and riot gear to push through lines of protesters who linked arms in a futile attempt to halt their advance.
Los Angeles police said on social media that 210 people were arrested at UCLA, and hundreds of arrests were made at other universities overnight and on Thursday.
“I’m a student here,” one UCLA protester told cameras as he was led away, his hands bound. “Please don’t fail us. Don’t fail us.” Hours later, the student, who would only give his first name as Ryan, was back on campus and vowed he would not stop fighting.
“We will be back,” said Ryan, who was cited for unlawful assembly. “We will be disrupting. We will be demanding divestment.” Students have rallied or set up tents at dozens of universities in recent days to protest Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.
Demonstrators have called on President Joe Biden, who has supported Israel’s right to defend itself, to do more to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and demanded schools divest from companies that support Israel’s government.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has said the people of Gaza “have been through more than anyone could imagine over the last 6 months”.
“They are very scared of what tomorrow brings. They are very scared if more military action will happen. Scared if they’ll be displaced again. Scared of the nights,” the agency said in a post on X.
“There is no safety in Gaza,” it added.
Palestinian advocacy groups have said that the head of orthopaedics at Gaza’s largest hospital Al-Shifa has died in Israeli custody, alleging he had been tortured during his detention, AFP reports.
Doctor Adnan Ahmed Atiya al-Barsh died at the Israeli-run Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank last month, the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Committee and the Palestinian Prisoners Club said in a joint statement.
Contacted by AFP about the reported death in custody, the Israeli army said: “We are currently not aware of such (an) incident.”
Barsh, 50, had been arrested with a group of other doctors last December at Al-Awda Hospital near the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
He died on April 19, the prisoners groups said, citing Palestinian authorities. “His body is still being held,” they added.
Read more here.
Saudi Arabia has stepped up the arrest of citizens for social media posts related to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza as the kingdom signals a readiness to agree to diplomatic relations with the Jewish state — if it commits to Palestinian statehood, Bloomberg reports.
Detaining people for online comments — even those more than 10 years old — and restrictions on free speech and political expression are the norm in Saudi Arabia.
Yet the recent spate of arrests are motivated by security concerns specifically linked to the October 7 invasion of Israel by Hamas and its aftermath, according to Riyadh-based diplomats and human rights groups.
Read full story here.
President Joe Biden has broken his virtual silence on the nationwide Gaza campus protests, saying the United States was not authoritarian but insisting “order must prevail”.
In a televised address from the White House, Biden added that there was “no place” for anti-semitism on university campuses, which have been roiled by pro-Palestinian demonstrations amid Israel’s bombardment in Gaza.
The 81-year-old Democrat — whose reelection bid in November faces a challenge from voters opposed to the bombardment — said there had to be a balance between the right to peaceful protest and the need to prevent violence.
“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” Biden said from the podium in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
Read the full story here.
A maritime pier constructed by the US military to speed the flow of humanitarian aid in Gaza should be open within a matter of days, despite poor weather that is hampering preparations, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said according to Reuters.
“We were hoping within days. I think that’s still a hope,” Kirby said at a news briefing.
The Palestinian economy is estimated to shrink by 26.9 per cent after seven months of bombardment, with the poverty rate surging, said a new United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) assessment released.
According to AFP, the estimates, released by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, also found that the Palestinian poverty rate will continue climbing to 58.4pc.
“Every additional day that this war continues is exacting huge and compounding costs to Gazans and all Palestinians,” said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner in a statement.
“These new figures warn that the suffering in Gaza will not end when the war does,” he added.
He warned of a “serious development crisis” stemming from the massive losses over a short period.
Should the bombardment continue for nine months, poverty is expected to more than double from pre-war levels, while the drop in gross domestic product would reach 29pc, the UNDP said.
US President Joe Biden was set to make an unscheduled public statement on the protests over Israel’s bombardment in Gaza that have roiled college campuses nationwide, AFP reports.
The White House remarks come after hundreds of police cleared a sprawling protest encampment overnight at the University of California, Los Angeles, tearing down barriers and arresting students.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh has said the group is studying a proposal for a truce in the nearly seven-month fighting raging in Gaza with a “positive spirit”, AFP reports.
In a call to Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, Haniyeh said he “appreciated the role played by Egypt”, which along with Qatar and the United States is mediating the talks, and “stressed the positive spirit of the movement in studying the ceasefire proposal”, according to a statement on Hamas’s official website.
Haniyeh confirmed that the movement’s delegation would go back to Egypt “as soon as possible to complete the ongoing discussions”.
The aim of those talks, Haniyeh said, would be “reaching an agreement that fulfils the demands of our people and stops the aggression”.
A UN agency has said that rebuilding Gaza will cost an estimated $30 billion to $40bn and require an effort on a scale the world has not seen since World War II, AFP reports.
“The United Nations Development Programme’s initial estimates for the reconstruction of … the Gaza Strip surpasses $30bn and could reach up to $40bn,” said UN assistant secretary-general Abdallah al-Dardari.
“The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented […] this is a mission that the global community has not dealt with since World War II.”
