Middle East Crisis
Live Reporting
Israeli army destroys home of suspected attacker
Israeli forces have blown up the home of a man who is alleged to have carried out a February shooting attack at a bus stop in southern Israel, reports the Wafa news agency.
The demolition of his eight-floor apartment, located in Jerusalem’s Shuafat refugee camp, has left his wife and four children homeless.
The man, 37-year-old Fadi Jamjoum, was fatally shot by an Israeli reservist following the February bus stop attack.
Within days, Israeli forces raided Jamjoum’s home and took measurements, preparing to demolish it, according to Wafa.
Israel regularly demolishes the homes of Palestinians accused of attacks on Israel, a policy that rights groups decry as a form of “collective punishment”.
Varoufakis sues Germany over ban ahead of planned Palestine Congress speech
Greece’s former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis is suing Germany after authorities banned him from entering the country in April, along with engaging in any kind of political activity, his DiEM25 movement has reported.
Documents submitted to Germany’s courts noted that Varoufakis was scheduled to speak on April 12 at the Palestine Congress – an event organised by Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East and other organisations as a forum to discuss what needs to be done to ensure equal political rights for everyone in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
“German authorities violently broke up the Congress and imposed a wholesale ban on Varoufakis,” DiEM25 wrote on its website, adding that authorities did not answer questions by Varoufakis’ lawyer citing “national security”.
“In invoking ‘national security’ to justify their slide towards totalitarianism, and with a view to fully support Israel‘s ‘right’ to commit war crimes against the Palestinian people undisturbed by criticism or protest, the German authorities have, in essence, abolished both the German Rule of Law and the most important principle of the EU – the citizens’ freedom of movement and the right to engage in political activity in every corner of the EU,” DiEM25 said.
DiEM25, or Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, describes itself as a pan-European, progressive movement that aims to democratise Europe by overthrowing the oligarchy.
Ireland and Spain could recognise Palestinian state on May 21: Report
According to a report by Ireland’s national broadcaster, Ireland, Spain and several other European Union member states are considering recognising a Palestinian state on May 21.
RTE News on Wednesday evening said contacts between Ireland and Spain, and between Slovenia and Malta, had intensified with a view to the countries jointly recognising Palestinian statehood.
According to the report, the countries have been waiting for a vote by the UN General Assembly on May 10, which could lead to the recognition of Palestine as qualified to become a full UN member.
In a joint statement on March 22, Spain, Ireland, Malta and Slovenia said they had agreed to take the first steps towards recognising a Palestinian state.
Israeli defence officials voice concern over shift in relations with US: Report
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, quoting defence officials, reports that the Israeli defence establishment believes the recent hold-up of US arms shipments would not affect the war on Gaza but could affect military preparedness on other fronts.
The officials were also concerned about a deterioration in relations between the Israeli government and the Biden administration and warned that the block of shipments signalled a shift in the ties between the two allies.
Ships attacked by Houthis in Gulf of Aden ‘Panama-flagged’: Report
Two vessels attacked by the Yemen-based Houthis in the Gulf of Aden were “Panama-flagged container ships” operating for a Geneva-based company, the Associated Press news agency reports.
Earlier we reported that Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree had described the vessels – identified as the MSC Diego and MSC Gina – as “Israeli”. He also said the Houthis had fired missiles and drones at the ships in “accurate” attacks.
The Joint Maritime Information Center, a US-led coalition of nations responding to Houthi attacks on shipping in the Middle East, said the attacks were launched on Tuesday morning, but “neither were hit and all crew on board are safe”.
It added that the vessels were “likely targeted due to perceived Israeli affiliation”, without confirming whether the vessels have links to Israel.
UNRWA says 80,000 people fled Rafah since Israeli assault
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has said some 80,000 people have fled Rafah since Israeli tanks and troops pushed into eastern areas of the city on Monday.
Calling for an immediate ceasefire as the latest “forced displacement in the Gaza Strip” unfolds, UNRWA said the toll on the tens of thousands of Palestinians forced to flee multiple times in search of refuge was “unbearable”.
“Nowhere is safe,” the agency added.
An estimated 1.5 million people had packed into Rafah in search of refuge over the last several months of Israel’s war on the territory. The UN and humanitarian aid groups are warning of a “catastrophe” should Israel launch a full ground invasion of the city.
Houthis says missiles, drones targeted two ships in Gulf of Aden
The Yemen-based Houthis have targeted two ships in the Gulf of Aden with ballistic missiles and drones, a spokesperson for the group has said.
The attacks on the ships – identified by the Houthis as the “Israeli” MSC DEGO and the MSC GINA – were “accurate”, Yahya Sare’e added, without providing further details.
The group said they also hit a third ship, the MSC VITTORIA, in two attacks carried out first in the Indian Ocean and then the Arabian Sea.
The Houthis, who have been targeting international vessels in the vital shipping lanes since November in retaliation for Israel’s war on Gaza, said they were “following developments” and won’t “hesitate to escalate their military operations”.
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Israel ‘has to pay attention’ to Biden’s threat to suspend arms supplies: Analyst
Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute think tank in Washington, DC, said President Biden is facing difficult choices between appeasing his Democratic supporters who want the war in Gaza to end, and his staunch support for Israel.
“He is dealing with very serious political problems. He has a lot of young progressives, as well as Arab-Americans, who’ve been very angry about his stand in Gaza and support for Israel,” Bandow told Al Jazeera.
“He is worried about losing those votes in November, and the campus protests have intensified that. He hoped that this crisis would go away, but these protests have actually amplified it, made it more threatening to him,” he said.
“So I believe this is an effort to show that he has heard them [the protesters], and he is willing to put pressure on Israel for the first time in a way that we have never seen before.
“I think this is very difficult for him. He has long said that he is the most pro-Israeli president ever. Early in the Gaza operation, he said that he would do nothing to interfere with Israel’s right to defend itself.
“So this a major step forward to withhold some of those munitions and bombs.
“The Israelis have to pay attention to that.”
Dutch police arrest 32 pro-Palestine demonstrators after University of Amsterdam protests
Dutch riot police have arrested 32 pro-Palestine protesters after moving in to remove barricades set up at the University of Amsterdam (UVA), where there have been clashes between demonstrators and police since Monday.
Officers cleared protesters out of an area in front of the UVA’s Binnengasthuis building in Amsterdam’s city centre, while demonstrators also blocked a major road and “threw ammonia at riot police”.
Police said the protesters, who are calling for the UVA to sever all ties with Israel, had been arrested for “violence, destruction, assault and incitement”.
These latest detentions mean that at least 169 people have been arrested since Monday.
Four killed in strike on Rafah house, Israeli attack helicopters hit Gaza City’s Zeitoun area
Four people have been killed and 16 injured as a result of an overnight Israeli bombing of a residential house in the Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood, west of Rafah city, Al Jazeera reported.
Israeli helicopter gunships have fired missiles towards the Zeitoun neighbourhood, south of Gaza City, where artillery shelling and gunfire from advancing Israeli military vehicles were also reported.
The Sabra neighbourhood, south of Gaza City, was reported to have been hit by sustained Israeli bombardment overnight.
Suspension of US bomb shipment to Israel ‘very far from what is required’: Analyst
Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies – a Washington, DC-based think tank – said the Biden administration’s withholding of the arms shipment to Israel was welcome but was far short of a ceasefire that people around the US and the world are demanding.
“This is an incredibly important move. First of all, every bomb that is held back by Washington means fewer Palestinians will be killed. We’ve seen 30 people killed just in the last 24 hours in and around Rafah,” Bennis told Al Jazeera.
“This is not enough. This notion that they will withhold more of the weapons – artillery shells and others – ‘if Israel attacks Rafah’, does not take into account that Israel is already bombing Rafah. So this is not the ceasefire that people all around the world and across the United States are demanding,” Bennis said.
“It is an important move. It does show how the [protest] movements, the demand for a ceasefire is having an impact on the White House,” she said.
“We have to be clear that the demand for a ceasefire is not being met with these actions. It is important because it is never too little. It might be one life saved with one bomb,” Bennis added.
“These 2,000-pound bombs routinely kill dozens, scores, more than 100 people at a time … And this one [arms] package that was being withheld apparently had more than 1,200 of those 2,000-pound bombs. So that’s not nothing. But it is very far from what is required.”
UN rapporteur: Palestinians have endured ‘half a century of rapacious military dictatorship’
The UN rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, has said that Israel’s war on Gaza “has to come to an end now”.
She said the war “did not start on October 7” and highlighted the more than 5,000 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza over five separate wars with Israel since 2008.
“[That’s] without counting the mass destruction, the maiming, the arbitrary arrests and detentions, the home demolitions, the forced displacement and countless other horrors the Palestinians have had to endure in over half a century of rapacious military dictatorship in the occupied Palestinian territory,” she wrote in a post on X.
Gaza war protesters stop traffic in Chicago as Biden attends fundraiser
President Biden is at a fundraiser … and it is rush hour in Chicago, and traffic on State Street, a famous street here in town, is stopped dead while these protesters stop the movement of traffic.
They have been very successful.
So what they are doing here is making a point – while President Biden is literally within hearing distance – and they are insisting that what he has done is not enough. That it is a first step.
What they want is an actual ceasefire in Gaza.
This goes beyond those protests we’ve seen at universities across the US. This is an instance of people in the city, the public, non-students, and also students as well, getting together to protest.
Police have surrounded them … but they are not making arrests. They are allowing them to continue this protest.
And it looks like it may go on for some time yet.
Israeli military carries out raids and arrests across the occupied West Bank
The Israeli military has carried out arrests across the occupied West Bank tonight, including in Hebron, where the Wafa news agency reports that one man has been detained during the storming of the city.
Israeli forces have also raided the town of Halhul and re-arrested a Palestinian man that had been released from an Israeli prison two weeks ago, according to Wafa.
The Israeli military has also stormed the town of Qabatiya and a village south of Jenin where they arrested a Palestinian man. Footage reportedly from the raid in Qabatiya shows an Israeli bulldozer being struck with an explosive device.
Raids have also been reported in other locations across the occupied West Bank, including:
The cities of Ramallah and el-Bireh
The town of Beit Ummar, west of Hebron
The town of Barta’a, west of Jenin
The town of Urif and the village of Tal, south of Nablus
Joe Biden ‘appears to finally draw a line’ with Israel over Rafah attack
The President told an American network that “civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centres”.
He said: “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem.”
In other words, the president is saying that he doesn’t want to have any part in supplying weapons that go into Rafah, and he’s urged Israel, he’s urged Benjamin Netanyahu not to go into Rafah.
The Israeli army is going in anyway, it appears.
And the US president appears to be finally drawing a line.
Now he’s under a lot of pressure … across the US there have been these protests.
Especially Democrats have been pressuring the president to draw the line somewhere and to pressure Israel into a ceasefire.
This seems to be his first direct act.
The first time President Biden has actually pushed back and said no.
Biden threatens to stop arm shipments if Israel invades Rafah
WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Joe Biden said Wednesday he would stop US weapons supplies to Israel if it attacks Rafah in southern Gaza, his most direct warning to date over the prosecution of the war against Hamas.
In an interview with CNN Biden also deplored the fact that civilians had been killed by the dropping of US bombs on the Palestinian territory.
