Israel-Palestine live: Thousands in state of panic as Israel continues to strike hospitals

A new "massacre" has been carried out in the Shujaiya neighbourhood, the Palestinian health ministry said on Tuesday.

In a statement, the ministry said an Israeli air strike hit the neighbourhood in the east of Gaza, killing a large number of people, all of them women and children.

The head of London's Metropolitan Police has said there are no grounds to ban a demonstration in support of Gaza planned for Saturday.

The comments by commissioner Mark Rowley come in response to calls from the government for the police to look into the march in case it disrupts planned Armistice Day commemorations.

"At this time, the intelligence surrounding the potential for serious disorder this weekend does not meet the threshold to apply for a ban," Rowley said in a statement.

“The organisers have shown complete willingness to stay away from the Cenotaph and Whitehall and have no intention of disrupting the nation’s remembrance events. Should this change, we’ve been clear we will use powers and conditions available to us to protect locations and events of national importance at all costs."

He added that there had been "an escalation of violence and criminality by small groups attaching themselves to demonstrations", however.

Protests against Israeli actions in Gaza have been happening on a weekly basis in London for almost a month.

A minute's silence has been held across Israel to mark a month since the Hamas attack in the south of the country that left more than 1,400 people dead and saw hundreds taken prisoner in Gaza.

A crowd gathered for a vigil outside the Knesset, lighting candles for the dead and missing.

At Jerusalem's Hebrew University around 1,000 people also observed a minute of silence and recited prayers.

The House of Representatives is moving to censure Palestinian-American congresswoman Rashida Tlaib over her comments on Israel's bombing of Gaza.

Speaking in the House on Tuesday, Tlaib said she would "not be silenced".

“No government is beyond criticism. The idea that criticising the government of Israel is antisemitic sets a very dangerous precedent, and it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation," she said.

"The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me. What I don’t understand is why the cries of Palestinians sound different to you all. We cannot lose our shared humanity, Mr Chair. I hear the voices of advocates in Israel and Palestine across America and around the world for peace."

The House of Representatives earlier rejected an attempt to block the resolution censuring Tlaib, which accuses her of “promoting false narratives” regarding Hamas’s 7 October attack and “calling for destruction for the State of Israel”.

US President Joe Biden asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a three-day pause in the fighting in Gaza to help progress in the release of hostages, Axios reported on Tuesday.

According to two US and Israeli officials, a deal being discussed between the US, Israel and Qatar would see Hamas release 10-15 hostages and use the three-day pause to verify the identities of all hostages, as well as deliver a list of names of those the group is holding.

In a phone call with Biden on Monday, however, Netanyahu said he did not trust Hamas to abide by a hostage deal or pause in fighting and warned that Israel could lose its current level of international support if the operation stopped for three days.

Hamas's military wing said it had destroyed 15 Israeli vehicles in the past 24 hours as a ground assault continues on the besieged enclave.

"During the last 24 hours, with God’s help, the Al-Qassam mujahideen were able to completely or partially destroy 15 military vehicles on the outskirts of Al-Shati camp and in Beit Hanoun," said the Qassam Brigades on their Telegram account.

They added they had struck Israeli forces "with dozens of mortar shells and engaged in clashes with enemy forces on various battle fronts".

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said a convoy carrying lifesaving medical supplies came under fire, lightly injuring a driver and damaging two trucks.

The convoy of five trucks and two other Red Cross vehicles were carrying supplies to health facilities including to Al-Quds hospital in Gaza.

The ICRC did not specify who fired on the convoy.

Israel's foreign minister has said neither Hamas nor his country would govern Gaza when the current conflict comes to an end.

“We don’t want to govern Gaza," Eli Cohen said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"We don’t want to run their lives. We just want to protect our people.”

He said that instead an international coalition comprised of the US, the European Union and Muslim majority countries, or local political leaders in Gaza, would take power.

In a televised statement Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel's military is encircling Gaza City and operating inside it. He warned there would be "no ceasefire" without the release of hostages.

"As far as tactical little pauses, an hour here, an hour there, we’ve had them before," Israel's prime minister said.

"I suppose we’ll check the circumstances in order to enable goods, humanitarian goods, to come in, or hostages, individual hostages, to leave. But I don’t think there’s going to be a general ceasefire.”

CIA Director Bill Burns met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss Israel’s military escalation in the Gaza Strip, according to a presidential spokesperson.

Burns is in the region as part of Washington’s efforts to contain the war, negotiate the release of hostages held by Hamas, and press Israel for a "tactical pause" in fighting.

Burns is looking to bolster relations with Cairo after sources told Middle East Eye that Egyptian officials warned the US that Israel’s goal to oust Hamas from power was "unrealistic".

Egypt has taken a more assertive position on the war than Israel and western capitals anticipated, pushing back against forced displacement of Palestinians and outsourcing security of the enclave to its military.

The visit marks a turnaround for Egypt’s diplomatic fortunes with the US after it was implicated in a US senate corruption probe and saw some military aid suspended.

“Whenever tensions erupt in Gaza, the US looks to Egypt,” Jonathan Cohen, the US’s former ambassador to Egypt, told MEE.

Read more: 'Conflicting pressures': Riled by Israel's Gaza plans, Egypt pushes back

The US State Department on Tuesday said 400 US citizens, lawful permanent residents and other "eligible people" had left the besieged enclave.

The US has previously said that around 400 US citizens and their families were present in the Gaza Strip, but the state department spokesperson did not clarify whether there are still any citizens left to evacuate.

Amnesty International has branded as "illegitimate" calls by the British government to ban a pro-Palestinian rally in London.

A number of politicians, including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, have condemned a planned demonstration against the violence in Gaza on Saturday as it coincides with the Armistice Day commemorations of the end of the First World War - with some ministers suggesting that police ban the march.

"Government pressure on police to ban peaceful protests is illegitimate. The Home Secretary describing overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations as 'hate marches' and 'extremist' is a dystopian distortion," Amnesty International tweeted on Tuesday:

Pro-Palestine groups have vowed to continue marching for Gaza in central London on Saturday as the police join government calls to cancel a planned demonstration. 

For the last four weeks, tens of thousands of pro-Palestine protesters have flooded central London to join demonstrations opposing Israel's bombing of Gaza. 

Saturday’s planned protest will take place at midday, an hour after a scheduled moment of silence on Armistice Day, which marks the end of World War One.

But over the last week, senior politicians, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, have called on organisers to cancel Saturday’s protest. 

The Metropolitan Police, which has mobilised hundreds of officers to manage the marches each week, also joined government calls for groups to postpone the protests.

Late on Monday, organisers said they would be resisting calls to cancel the protest after the Palestinian health ministry said Israel had killed at least 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

"Those mounting pressure are the same voices actively resisting the call for a ceasefire despite overwhelming public support for that call," the statement read. 

READ MORE: Groups resist calls to cancel Armistice Day march

An Israeli newspaper regarded as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's staunchest backer has called for his resignation at the end of the Gaza war.

Israel Hayom, owned by Israeli-American businessman Sheldon Adelson, has been described as a "mouthpiece" for Netanyahu and his Likud party since its founding in 2007.

However, on Tuesday Uri Dagon, the head of the outlet's News Department, published a column in which said Netanyahu should "lead us to victory and then go".

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is focused on the war, no doubt, but Bibi Netanyahu is focused on saving his skin," read the article, using a nickname for the prime minister.

"He looks at his predicament and thinks about the day after the war while prosecuting it; he is thinking about the ways to preserve his governing Coalition, stay in power, and keep his political viability over the years."

He said that the long-running protests against Netanyahu's judicial reforms had undermined the cohesiveness of the nation, something only revived by the Hamas attack on 7 October.

"Therefore, maybe it's time to think out loud rather than in a whisper: Benjamin Netanyahu needs to go as soon as possible," he wrote.

A group of academics and experts on state crime have said that Israel's past actions and its current action in Gaza fit the 'legal and criminological definitions' of genocide.

The letter, initiated by the International State Crime Initiative and currently featuring 11 signatures, said Israel's response to Hamas attacks on 7 October was "disproportionate" and said Palestine was seeing a "second Nakba".

"Israel’s actions in Gaza and historic actions against the Palestinian people fit both legal and criminological definitions of the crime," reads the letter.

"As Raphael Lemkin, the author of the term genocide wrote, genocide is not limited to spectacularised acts of mass killings but includes ‘a coordinated plan aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups.'"