Gaza Tension
Live Reporting
Pro-Palestine rallies held across Morocco
Mass rallies have taken place on the streets of Jdeideh, Casablanca and Marrakesh in support of Palestinians in Gaza.
Demonstrators in Casablanca cheered and called on Muslims participating in the religious Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia to pray for Gaza.
In Jdeideh, protesters chanted various slogans including “The people want to overthrow normalisation”.
Residents of Marrakesh rallied in the centre of the capital with Palestinian flags and banners condemning normalisation with Israel and chanted slogans like “Boycott the killers of children and rapists of women” and “What a shame, Gaza is destroyed”.
Morocco’s recognition of Israel and normalisation of relations came at the end of 2020 when it signed the Abraham Accords. Mediated by the United States, the accords saw the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan also normalise relations with Israel in return for various concessions.
UK Labour Party’s Gaza stance may risk its election majority
Voters in the UK are gearing up for a general election that may result in a major defeat for the ruling Conservative government.
The opposition Labour Party, which has gained ground initially, faces challenges in key constituencies with student and Muslim populations due to the war on Gaza.
Israeli polls find Netanyahu’s party reducing gap with Gantz
Two new electoral polls show that Netanyahu’s Likud party has reduced the gap with former minister Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party.
However, both polls indicated that the majority of voters would prefer Gantz as the country’s leader.
The polls, for the left-wing Ma’ariv daily and the right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper, showed Likud winning 21 seats behind the National Unity Party on 24.
Last week, the Ma’ariv poll showed Gantz’s party on 27 seats. At the beginning of the year, it regularly polled in the high 30s.
The poll also found that the current ruling coalition would win 52 seats in the 120-seat Knesset against 58 for the main opposition parties.
Netanyahu has refused to call early elections and would not face a vote until 2026 if his coalition holds.
‘Isolation and pariah status’ of Israel growing: Ex UNRWA official
Chris Gunness, a former UNRWA spokesman, said Israeli military’s inclusion on a UN “blacklist” of countries that harm children will increase the country’s isolation and further diminish its international standing.
“This is the ultimate list of shame that Israel has been put on because the killing of children breaks the ultimate taboo,” Gunness told Al Jazeera.
“Some of the groups and countries on this list include Boko Haram, ISIS [ISIL], al-Qaeda, Russia, Myanmar. This puts Israel in a list of some of the most appalling regimes and groups in the world,” Gunness said. “Hamas and Islamic Jihad are also there, including, by the way, Israeli settlers for the things they are doing in the West Bank.”
“Given the totality of what we are seeing in terms of accountability mechanisms: We’ve got the ICJ and the ICC. We have reports coming up from the Human Rights Council. I think as things build up, so the isolation and pariah status of Israel will be continual, and continually reaffirmed,” he said.
“I think that will have consequences as people see the totality of what is going on,” he added.
Rockets, missiles fired at Israeli sites
Six rockets have been fired towards an Israeli site in the occupied Shebaa Farms in southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera reported.
Israel Today also reported that five antitank missiles were fired from Lebanon towards Israeli soldiers and farmers in Metula, northern Israel. No casualties were reported.
‘Remnants of a life’: UNRWA official posts scenes of destruction in Gaza
The head of legal affairs at UNRWA, Philippa Greer, has posted scenes of the destruction in Gaza City as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression.
Commenting on the video, Greer said: “This is Gaza City yesterday – remnants of a life that once lived. Nothing quite prepares you, especially if you knew her before.
“These are people’s homes, their favorite cafes, their parks, their schools. Gone. Destruction everywhere of life, a place, a time, a culture. From the inside out.”
Israel uses ‘medieval-style’ weapons on Lebanon border
Israeli forces have been filmed using a medieval-style trebuchet catapult on the border with southern Lebanon.
The trebuchet, a weapon made of wood with a long arm that catapults projectiles, can be seen hurling balls of fire over a fortified border wall into southern Lebanon, where intense fighting is ongoing with the armed group Hezbollah.
An unnamed Israeli official told NBC News that the use of the weapon was not sanctioned and it will not be used again.
Thousands of West Bank Palestinians attend Hajj; Israeli border blockade halts Gaza pilgrims
Palestinian authorities say 4,200 pilgrims from the occupied West Bank have arrived in Mecca for the annual Hajj pilgrimage, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
Pilgrims from Gaza were unable to travel to Mecca this year because of the takeover and closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt by Israeli forces in May, the news agency reports.
Saudi authorities say 1,000 more pilgrims from the families of Palestinians killed or wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza also arrived to perform Hajj at the invitation of King Salman of Saudi Arabia, AP reports. The 1,000 invitees were already outside Gaza – mostly in Egypt – before the closure of the Rafah crossing.
“We are deprived of [performing] Hajj because the crossing is closed, and because of the raging wars and destruction,” Amna Abu Mutlaq, a 75-year-old Palestinian woman from Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis who had planned to perform Hajj this year, told the AP.
“They [Israel] deprived us from everything,” she said.
Gaza ceasefire proposal – the blame game
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken talking to Al Jazeera blamed Hamas for the ceasefire deadlock in Gaza, stating that Israel had already accepted the US proposal.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed, leaving the proposal in limbo and the blame game ongoing.
Hamas ceasefire stance shows confidence of ‘winning in the Gaza Strip’: Monitors
US-based defence think tanks, Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP), say that Hamas’s recent ceasefire proposal amendments demonstrate that the Palestinian armed group is “confident that it is winning in the Gaza Strip”.
“Senior Hamas officials have repeatedly expressed confidence that Hamas will survive the war, despite Israeli military pressure,” the ISW/CTP say in their Gaza report. “Hamas forces throughout the Gaza Strip remain combat effective and are trying to reconstitute. Hamas has also begun trying to reassert its political authority in some parts of the strip,” the war monitors said.
The monitors also noted that Israeli forces concluded a weeklong operation in the Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods of Gaza City on Thursday and that Israel has now “conducted at least five distinct clearing operations” in Zeitoun since the start of the war.
Hamas fighters carried out rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli forces deployed along the Netzarim Corridor on Thursday while fighters mortared Israeli forces pushing into the west of Rafah.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired rockets at Israel’s Ashdod and Ashkelon cities, as well as a number of smaller Israeli towns, and mortared Israel forces at the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) border crossing with Gaza.
Maritime security expert says Houthis ‘getting more successful’ with attacks
The Yemen-based Houthis are becoming increasingly accurate in their attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, according to the managing director of intelligence and risk at British maritime security firm Ambrey.
“The data would also say they are getting more successful with direct hits,” Joshua Hutchinson said in a post on LinkedIn.
He added that “several near misses have been reported”, but the Houthis remain “consistent with their affiliated targeting”.
Hutchinson’s comments come after the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said that a civilian mariner was “seriously injured” in a Houthi missile attack on a Ukrainian-owned and Polish-operated bulk cargo vessel in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday.
Israeli military arrests 13-year-old in the occupied West Bank
Israeli forces have arrested a 13-year-old boy in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, the Wafa news agency reports.
The boy, identified as Tamer Muhammad Sayed, was passing through a military checkpoint at the southern entrance to the city when he was arrested, according to Wafa.
Israeli military raids have also been reported in other locations in the occupied West Bank, including:
The Arroub refugee camp, north of Hebron, where clashes have erupted
The villages of Zabuba and Rummana, west of Jenin
The town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron
The town of Nahalin, near Bethlehem
The town of Qusra, near Nablus
‘Isolation and pariah status’ of Israel growing, says former UNRWA spokesman
Chris Gunness, the former spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said the Israeli military’s inclusion on a UN “blacklist” of countries that harm children will increase the country’s isolation and further diminish its international standing.
“This is the ultimate list of shame that Israel has been put on because the killing of children breaks the ultimate taboo,” Gunness told Al Jazeera.
“Some of the groups and countries on this list include Boko Haram, ISIS [ISIL], al-Qaeda, Russia, Myanmar. This puts Israel in a list of some of the most appalling regimes and groups in the world,” Gunness said. “Hamas and Islamic Jihad are also there, including, by the way, Israeli settlers for the things they are doing in the West Bank.”
“Given the totality of what we are seeing in terms of accountability mechanisms: We’ve got the ICJ – the International Court of Justice – the International Criminal Court. We have reports coming up from the Human Rights Council. I think as things build up, so the isolation and pariah status of Israel will be continual, and continually reaffirmed,” he said.
“I think that will have consequences as people see the totality of what is going on,” he added.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller says the US is unsatisfied with Hamas’s response to a ceasefire proposal “because it took a long time and then included amendments that delayed reaching an agreement”.
Miller also said Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich’s decision to withhold about $35m in tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority is “wrongheaded” and “not appropriate”.
Israel has been officially added to a UN blacklist of countries that harm children, with UN chief Antonio Guterres saying “the scope of death and destruction” in Gaza has been “unprecedented”.
Battles rage in Rafah as Biden blames Hamas for truce delay
GAZA STRIP (AFP) - Israeli helicopters struck Gaza's Rafah Thursday (Jun 13), residents said, with militants reporting street battles in the southern city as US President Joe Biden called Hamas the "biggest hang-up" to another truce.
Tensions also soared on Israel's northern border with more attacks by Lebanese Hamas ally Hezbollah targeting military positions.
