Palestine-Israel war
Live Reporting
UNRWA chief says Israel ‘must stop its campaign’ against agency
UN Palestinian refugee agency chief Philippe Lazzarini has said that Israel “must stop its campaign against UNRWA” in an opinion article published by the New York Times, AFP reports.
“The war in Gaza has produced a blatant disregard for the mission of the United Nations, including outrageous attacks on [UNRWA] employees, facilities and operations,” agency chief Lazzarini said.
“These attacks must stop and the world must act to hold the perpetrators accountable.”
People killed while sheltering in UN facilities: UNRWA
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says it has received “horrific reports” from UNRWA facilities in Jabalia, northern Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.
“Displaced people, including children, reportedly killed and injured sheltering in our school, besieged by IDF (Israeli army) tanks. Tents of people sheltering at our school reportedly set on fire by IDF,” the agency said in a post on X.
UNRWA also said it received reports of its office being hit and destroyed in air strikes, as well as bulldozed by Israeli forces.
Gaza aid not reaching the population: UN
The United Nations has said the humanitarian aid allowed into the Gaza Strip is not getting to civilians in need, urging Israel to fulfil its legal obligations, AFP reports.
“The aid that is getting in is not getting to the people, and that’s a major problem,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told a media briefing in Geneva.
He highlighted the role of the Israeli authorities at their Kerem Shalom crossing, the main entry point for aid into the Palestinian territory since the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza was closed by the Israeli military on May 7.
“We continue to insist that Israeli authorities’ obligation under the law to facilitate delivery of aid does not stop at the border,” said Laerke.
UNRWA warns disease spreading in Gaza as not enough medicine
Displaced Palestinians, many having fled violence four or five times during the ongoing crisis in Gaza, are struggling to get by in crammed shelters with few hygiene supplies, Al Jazeera reports.
The overcrowding is causing infectious diseases to spread more rapidly, warned the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), adding there are not enough vaccines or medication to meet people’s needs.
“We need safe and unrestricted access”, said the agency, whose distribution centre in Rafah is now inaccessible, said in a post on X.
Suspense abounds over Palestinian health resolution at WHO
A long-standing resolution urging World Health Organisation action on towering health needs in the Palestinian territories hangs in the balance after Israel secured an amendment requiring the text to mention hostages held in Gaza, AFP reports.
The largely technical text presented on Wednesday by a group of Arab countries, including the Palestinians, to the WHO’s supreme decision-making body, had been expected to pass easily, as similar resolutions have done annually for more than 50 years.
But before the text could go to a vote, Israel surprisingly secured enough support to demand it be amended to include a call for the release of the hostages held in Gaza and a condemnation of the alleged militarisation of hospitals in the territory by Hamas.
Nuseirat attack victims ran free meal kitchen for displaced
The Israeli military has continued to carry out air strikes throughout the Gaza Strip. The worst was an overnight attack on residential homes in Bureij refugee camp that killed 11 people.
The civil defence crew told us that the victims were part of a displaced family from Rafah city. They include women and children. When we showed up at the hospital this morning, one surviving family member told us there were still more people under the rubble.
In a separate attack [in Nuseirat camp], an Israeli attack drone struck a car carrying three family members. We’ve learned that the family ran a kitchen that provided free meals for displaced people. This is not the first time this particular family, which is well known in Nuseirat, has been targeted.
In the initial weeks of the war, 24 members of the family were killed.
Over 98 percent of Gaza’s bakeries closed: Gaza media office
More than three weeks after Israel seized the Rafah crossing, Gaza is suffering from a severe shortage of fuel, propane and medicine, compounding the suffering of Gaza’s sick and hungry, said Gaza’s Government Media Office.
Due to the lack of fuel and propane, more than 98 percent of Gaza’s bakeries have been forced to close, cutting off a key food source, while more than 700 water wells have stopped functioning, said the media office.
“We warn the international community and all countries of the world against the catastrophic worsening of the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip,” it said.
Spain rejects Israeli ‘restrictions’ on its Jerusalem consulate
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares says Spain rejects “restrictions” that Israel plans to impose on the activities of its consulate in Jerusalem in response to Madrid’s recognition of a Palestinian state.
“This morning we sent a note verbale to the Israeli government in which we reject any restriction on the normal activity of the Spanish consulate general in Jerusalem, as its status is guaranteed by international law,” he said during an interview with radio Onda Cero.
Egypt denies agreement with Israel to reopen Rafah border crossing: Report
An Egyptian official has denied that an agreement was reached with Israel to reopen the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip, Egyptian TV has reported.
Quoting a high-level source, Egypt’s state-affiliated al-Qahera News TV said on Friday that “there is no truth” in media reports about an Egyptian-Israeli agreement to reopen the vital crossing to Gaza – the Palestinian side of which was taken over by the Israeli military earlier this month.
“Egypt insists on a full Israeli withdrawal from the crossing as a condition to resume its work,” the source told the channel, according to Germany’s DPA news agency.
Since the capture of the Rafah border crossing by Israeli tanks, Egypt had indicated it would not coordinate aid transports through Rafah until Israeli forces withdrew and returned control of the frontier to Palestinian authorities.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
But, Israel’s war on Gaza has fuelled anti-Israeli sentiment in Egypt and ties are strained amid fears in Cairo that Israel wants to trigger a mass exodus of desperate Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Israel ‘demolishing’ homes, public facilities in eastern Rafah neighbourhoods
The Israeli military has continued to bomb Rafah and push deeper into the western part of the city.
Eyewitnesses described seeing tanks and armoured vehicles, with artillery shells reaching as far as the tent camp for displaced people in the western part of the city, which is an evacuation zone.
As it stated, the Israeli military has full control over the Philadelphi Corridor and is now systematically demolishing homes in the eastern part of Rafah city.
The entire eastern part of Rafah, including the as-Salam and al-Jenina neighbourhoods, has been cleared of residential buildings and public facilities.
Israeli military continues pullbacks in northern Gaza
After withdrawing from Jthe abalia refugee camp yesterday, Israeli forces have begun to move out of more areas of northern Gaza, including Tall az-Zaatar, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoon, according to reporters on the ground.
Palestinian rescuers are now beginning to recover the bodies of people killed in these areas where Israeli ground troops had been operating for weeks, according to the reports.
Jabalia resident: Israeli forces ‘are testing missiles on us’
As we’ve been reporting, the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip has been largely reduced to rubble after a 20-day Israeli military incursion had been fiercely resisted by Palestinian armed groups.
Residents of Jabalia, now returning to the area after Israeli forces partially withdrew on Thursday, say the level of destruction is overwhelming, with homes and public buildings decimated and decomposing bodies left in the rubble-strewn streets to be eaten by stray animals.
“Look at the scale of destruction in Jabalia. The Israelis have destroyed us. They are actually testing their missiles on us,” one resident returning to the city told Al Jazeera.
Israeli military claims Hamas special force commando killed
In its latest war update, Israel’s military said it destroyed a Hamas weapons depot in Rafah and killed a member of the Palestinian group’s elite naval commando unit.
In its operations in the north, the Israeli military said it had “dismantled hundreds of metres” of tunnels and killed more Palestinian fighters using tank fire.
The Israeli Air Force also hit military infrastructure and fighting positions in central Gaza, the military said, killing several people.
Israel’s latest reported attacks on Gaza come as numerous civilians were killed and injured, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, including two women and three children in a strike on the Bureij refugee camp.
With prolonged Gaza war, Israel’s Netanyahu may outlast Biden: Analysts
Israel’s National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said earlier this week that Israeli forces will be fighting in Gaza for the next seven months, at least.
With Israel’s continuation of its war on Gaza likely to harm Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in November – as support for him plummets over his unequivocal backing of Israel – the November 5 presidential vote could mean Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlasts Biden’s term in office.
That dim prediction for Biden comes as analysts have warned that Netanyahu has a personal political interest in prolonging the war on Gaza, which is boosting his political standing at home.
Jabalia reduced to rubble – Israel destroys most of Gaza’s largest camp
Three weeks of intensified Israeli attacks have all but destroyed what was the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians who used to live in Jabalia say they are shocked by the level of destruction, saying that Israeli forces have left the area of northern Gaza completely uninhabitable.
MIT students walk out of commencement over university’s links to Israel
More than 100 graduates walked out of their commencement at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to protest the institution’s ongoing links to Israel.
MIT’s outdoor commencement ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was disrupted for 10 to 15 minutes on Thursday when some graduates wearing keffiyehs over their caps and gowns walked out while chanting “Free, free Palestine”, and held signs that said, “All eyes on Rafah”.
“There is going to be no business as usual as long as MIT holds research projects with the Israeli Ministry of Defence,” said David Berkinsky, 27, who earned a doctorate degree in chemistry and was part of the walk-out protest.
“There are no graduates in Gaza. There are no universities left in Gaza because Israel has bombed every single one,” Berkinsky told The Associated Press news agency.
Some people at the commencement swore at the protesters and yelled, “Good riddance to Hamas terror fans”.
A pro-Palestine encampment at MIT was cleared by the university on May 10.
Experts says Israel could have used smaller bombs to avoid civilian deaths in Rafah camp attack
Defence experts who have reviewed debris images from an Israeli air strike that ignited a deadly fire in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah have questioned why Israel did not use smaller, more precise weapons when so many civilians were nearby, The Associated Press news agency (AP) reports.
Two experts said the bombs used in the strike – which killed as many as 45 people sheltering in a temporary displacement camp – were likely US-made.
The experts told AP that even the smallest jet-launched munition may be too big when civilians are near because of how they explode and can send fragments far, and the bombs used were likely US-made 250-pound (113-kilogramme) GBU-39 small-diameter bombs.
“You essentially have two bombs they use that the fragments can travel 600 meters in a densely packed area. So that just doesn’t check out if they’re trying to limit casualties,” said Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance demolition technician.
Ball and Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps Reserves colonel and senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the debris field from the attack was indicative of the bombs possibly being set to detonate before impact, which would ensure their intended targets were killed but also risk unintended deaths.
Israeli strike on Bureij refugee camp kills five: Report
The Israeli military has bombed a house in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, killing five people, according to local media.
Women and children were killed in the strike, which struck the al-Sous family home, the Wafa news agency reports. The injured have been transferred to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir el-Balah.
Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob has said his government has approved a decision to recognise Palestinian statehood, putting the final decision in the hands of parliament, which must approve it.
Hamas has informed mediators of its readiness to reach a “full agreement” with Israel if it “stops its war and aggression” in Gaza.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says 32,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah in the past two days as Israel ramps up its deadly assault on the city.
Rafah battles intensify as Israel seizes key Gaza-Egypt corridor
RAFAH, Gaza (AFP) - Intense shelling and gunfire rocked Rafah in southern Gaza on Thursday (May 30), after Israel declared it had seized a strategic corridor along the Palestinian territory's border with Egypt.
Israel launched its military incursion into Rafah in early May despite international objections over the safety of civilians sheltering in the city.
