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
Israel seizes Rafah crossing amid global outcry
Alarm in Israel at possible ICC legal action over Gaza atrocities
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.
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.
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.
Israel’s chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari has said forces rescued the bodies of three hostages from the Gaza Strip on Thursday night, Reuters reports.
Hagari identified the three as Shani Louk, Amit Buskila and Yitzhak Gelernter, who he said “were murdered by Hamas while escaping the Nova music festival on October 7 and their bodies were taken into Gaza”.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the military operation and reiterated a pledge to return all the hostages.
“We will bring back all our hostages, whether they are alive or dead,” he said in a statement.
The Israeli army has told AFP that renewed fighting in Gaza’s northern town of Jabalia is “perhaps the fiercest” in over seven months of the conflict.
“Hamas was in complete control here in Jabalia until we arrived a few days ago,” the Israeli army told AFP.
The current fighting in Jabalia is “perhaps the fiercest we have encountered” in this area since the start of the offensive in the Gaza Strip, the army said, adding that it was now operating in the town’s refugee camp.
Read more here.
A video shared on social media shows a police dog biting the arm of a cop in Amsterdam who is using violence against pro-Palestine demonstrators.
Videos of multiple residential blocks being destroyed by huge explosions in the Gaza Strip have been shared on Facebook by Israeli soldiers, UK-based Metro reports quoting an investigation by Bellingcat.
Bellingcat tracked a single IDF combat engineering battalion, 8219 Commando, using posts made by its members on social media as they moved across Gaza, demolishing tunnels, houses, and mosques.
One of the clips shows multiple demolitions of residential tower blocks next to Al-Quds Hospital in Tel al-Hawa, a neighbourhood in Gaza City.
In another, two of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers lean against a balcony as a huge explosion behind them sends a thick cloud of grey smoke into the sky.
The relaxed scene is also evident as the commandos smoke shisha and raise glasses in another elevated location as a detonation takes place.
Read the full investigation here.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has put a question to the Israeli delegation about humanitarian conditions in its declared “evacuation zones” in Gaza, Al Jazeera says.
Judge Georg Nolte read the question: “Can Israel provide information about the existing humanitarian conditions in the designated evacuation zones, in particular al-Mawasi, and how it would ensure safe passage to these zones, as well as the provision of shelter, food, water, and other humanitarian aid and assistance to all evacuees that are and can be expected to arrive in these zones?”
Israel has been asked to submit a written reply to the question no later than 4pm tomorrow (May 18), the court said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said it received no medical supplies in the Gaza Strip for 10 days as Israel pursues a new offensive against Hamas, AFP reports.
Israel’s closure of the Rafah crossing into Gaza has caused “a difficult situation”, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said. “The last medical supplies that we got in Gaza was before May 6.”
Jasarevic said the biggest concern was over fuel needed to keep clinics and hospitals running. Gaza’s health facilities need up to 1.8 million litres of fuel per month to keep operating.
The spokesman said only 159,000 litres had entered Rafah since the border closure. “This is clearly not sufficient,” he added, highlighting how only 13 out of 36 hospitals across the Palestinian territory are now “partially” operating.
“Hospitals still functioning are running out of fuel, and that puts so many lives in danger,” said Jasarevic. “Current military operations in Rafah are putting countless lives at risk.”
As one of Israel’s counsel at the International Court of Justice, Tamar Kaplan Tourgman, read her client’s final submission, a person inside the court shouted “liar”, Al Jazeera reports.
“The State of Israel requests the court to reject the request for the modification and indication of provisional measures submitted by the Republic of South Africa,” Tourgman’s statement said.
Britain has said it has delivered aid to Gaza via a floating pier for the first time, using the temporary pier installed by the United States to transport shelter kits into the enclave, Reuters reports.
“UK aid is now being delivered to people through the temporary pier off Gaza,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a statement.
“More aid will follow in the coming weeks, but we know the maritime route is not the only answer. We need to see more land routes open.”
Doctors at Kuwaiti Speciality Hospital say it is one of the few places in Rafah where the wounded or dying can turn for care, but that role may come under unbearable pressure if Israel launches a full-scale advance into the southern Gaza city, Reuters reports.
Israeli forces are bearing down on Rafah as part of their drive to eradicate Hamas, despite warnings this could result in mass casualties in an area where displaced civilians have found shelter.
Staff at the Speciality Hospital say they fear such an assault would produce a crush of new patients that would overwhelm exhausted doctors, who already complain of shortages of medicine and proper equipment.
“We have been here from the start of the war until now, and I do hope they will not target us, they will not threaten us,” said doctor Jamal al-Hams.
“I do hope the whole medical team will continue to present its services to the injured people, to the critically ill patients, to the people who have chronic diseases,” he added.
Read more here.
Israeli counsel Tamar Kaplan Tourgman has argued before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that many of South Africa’s claims of Israeli military misconduct are “simply false”, Al Jazeera reports.
This includes South Africa’s claims that Israel’s military has set out “extermination zones” where people in Gaza can be targeted on the basis of their location, Tourgman, the principal deputy legal adviser of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, says.
It also includes accusations that Israel is utilising artificial intelligence software to decide on military targets, which Tourgman dismisses as being based on an unreliable media report.
Israeli forces have stormed various areas in the West Bank, including near Nablus, Bethlehem and Hebron, making numerous arrests and wounding at least one Palestinian, Al Jazeera reports citing Wafa news agency.
Here is a breakdown of the latest raids (according to Al Jazeera):
Over at the International Court of Justice, Israel’s lawyer Gilad Noam has argued that all provisional measures sought by South Africa are without merit, Al Jazeera reports.
Specifically, he argues Israel should not be ordered to withdraw from Gaza because that would mean:
Follow Al Jazeera’s live coverage of the ICJ proceedings here.
The Israeli military says settlers attacked and burned a truck in the occupied West Bank overnight, wounding the driver, Al Jazeera quotes Israeli media as reporting.
Kan public radio reported that the protesters believed the truck was carrying aid supplies to Gaza. It quoted the military as saying the truck was not carrying aid.
The incident comes just days after aid trucks heading towards the Gaza Strip were ransacked by Israeli protesters. Soldiers who arrived to separate the settlers from the Israeli driver were attacked and three soldiers were slightly hurt, the military said.
