Live Blog Update| Israel's genocide in Gaza
This is an entry from: Israel-Palestine live: Unicef says over 13,000 children killed in Gaza

Evening recap

12 March 2024 23:44 GMT

Hello MEE readers.

Tuesday saw the arrival of much-needed aid to Gaza, including a shipment that arrived from the United Nations and Morocco, which used the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to enter Gaza — the first time the crossing was used for allowing aid into Gaza after five months of war.

Hezbollah launched around 100 rockets towards Israel and the occupied Golan Heights in retaliation to a deadly Israeli strike near the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek.

Israeli warplanes then struck the area again, saying it hit two command centres near Baalbek.

Here's what else you need to know from today:

  • Two lawsuits were announced today regarding the ongoing crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech at US universities. Columbia University was sued over its decision to ban its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. And a group of faculty sued the University of Pennsylvania in an attempt to stop a congressional probe seeking all materials regarding pro-Palestine activity on campus.

  • Israeli police shot dead a 13-year-old boy in East Jerusalem who was holding up a firework. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir praised the incident.

  • US national security advisor Jake Sullivan said that Washington believes the path to peace "does not lie in smashing into Rafah".  Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would press forward with its military campaign and "finish the job" in Rafah.

  • UN officials have welcomed the opening of a maritime aid corridor into Gaza, but warned that it was no substitute for a land route to get humanitarian assistance into the enclave. UK foreign secretary David Cameron echoed similar sentiments, calling on Israel to open more land routes into Gaza.

  • The French daily newspaper Liberation came under fire for publishing a cartoon that mocks fasting Palestinians in Gaza searching for food.

  • A Turkish shipment of humanitarian aid stuck at Israel’s Ashdod port left for Gaza earlier this week, diplomatic sources and a UN spokesperson told MEE.

  • The Hebrew University of Jerusalem suspended prominent Palestinian academic Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian after she said that it was time to "abolish Zionism".