Late night recap

Good evening MEE readers, 

Israel continued its bombardment of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, attacking a United Nations school and other targets in the north's Jabalia refugee camp, where at least 80 people were killed. 

In all, Israeli forces have killed at least 12,300 people in Gaza, including more than 5,000 children and 3,300 women. In addition, 30,000 people have been injured.

Israel has forcibly ejected over one million Palestinians from north Gaza, but have continued to bomb locations all across the Strip, including in the south. Still, satellite images on Saturday showed large numbers of Palestinians in Gaza fleeing to southern parts of the enclave. 

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees denounced the Israeli strikes on UN-run schools in Gaza. 

Philippe Lazzarini said he had seen "horrifying images and footage of scores of people killed and injured" in one of his agency's schools "sheltering thousands of displaced".

"These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop," he posted on X, formerly Twitter.

In an opinion article in the Washington Post, US President Joe Biden said the Palestinian Authority should ultimately govern the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. 

"As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalised Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution," Biden said in the article. 

"There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory," he continued. 

Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, however, said that Israel plans to occupy Gaza indefinitely with no chance of PA involvement. 

"There will be Israeli security control from the Jordan [river] to the [Mediterranean] sea at all times," Cohen said, alluding to a Palestinian resistance chant that calls for Palestine to be free "from the river to the sea". 

The foreign minister, in an interview on Channel 12 on Saturday, rejected any notion that the PA would play a role in Gaza's future governance, saying that the PA had "not condemned the October 7 event" and continues to pay members of the Hamas party's salaries in the occupied West Bank. 

Meanwhile, Israel's investigation into the Hamas movement's 7 October attack has determined that the group likely did not know about the music festival that was targeted before the deadly attack was launched. 

Investigators said that the target for Hamas' attack seemed to be a Kibbutz, but changed plans once the festival was discovered, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported on Saturday. 

In addition, the investigation found that an Israeli army helicopter that arrived on the scene following the attack was responsible for at least some of the deaths, as the helicopter mistakenly shot festival goers instead of Hamas operatives. 

According to police, at least 364 people were killed at the festival. How many were killed by the army helicopter remains unknown.