Israel-Palestine live: Biden urges Egypt, Qatar to press Hamas for hostage deal

Rajaa Jendiya’s husband was killed by Israeli forces on 14 March, in the latest “flour massacre” to afflict Gaza. 

Aged 29, Jendiya was suddenly now a single parent to their young three children. 

With no milk available and the last bag of wheat flour her husband brought home before his death running out, the Palestinian mother is grappling with the challenge of how to feed her family.

“I found myself responsible alone for these three. Before my husband was martyred, I did not think about how I would get them food: he used to go out at the beginning of the day and come back at night with whatever he found,” Jendiya, a resident of Shujaiya neighbourhood in the east of Gaza City, told Middle East Eye, as the Arab world marked Mother’s Day.

“I cannot rely on anyone, my brothers-in-law have evacuated to Rafah [in southern Gaza] and my only brother is trapped [by the Israeli army] near the Shifa Hospital. I have no one and I need to recover from the shock of losing my husband as soon as possible so I can think about how to feed my children.”

Read more: Palestinian mothers express hope and fear on Mother's Day

Arab ministers have met with a Palestinian official in Cairo to discuss efforts to end Israel's war on Gaza.

The ministers met with Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee general secretary Hussein al-Sheikh to discuss "efforts to stop the Israeli war against Gaza, the inevitability of achieving a ceasefire, and full access to aid", according to the Egyptian foreign ministry's spokesperson.

The ministry added that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also meet Sheikh, along with the ministers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and the UAE.

A burning object was thrown at the Israeli embassy in The Hague on Thursday morning, according to Dutch police.

The police said that no one was wounded, and they had arrested a suspect. The incident is being investigated.

There has been a sharp increase in hate crimes across Europe since the Gaza war broke out on 7 October.

Israel's embassy in The Hague wrote on X: "It is unacceptable that such an attack can take place in the Netherlands. Fortunately, no injuries were reported.

"We trust that the authorities will take all possible measures to prevent such attacks. This proves the dangerous consequences of the worrying trend of increasing hatred and incitement. This hatred cannot be tolerated."

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Thursday, where they discussed the ongoing negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza.

The meeting comes a day after Blinken met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Jeddah, where they discussed establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees to Israel, according to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.

Officials from 36 countries and UN agencies gathered in Cyprus to discuss how to send aid to besieged Palestinians in the Gaza Strip through the maritime route that was opened last week.

Reuters reported that delegates "would also discuss the creation of a fund to coordinate operational activities of the initiative", although the current meeting was not a donor conference.

Israeli forces have destroyed the main surgical building at Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital, following four days of siege.

The building was blown up on Thursday, as Israel tightened its siege of Gaza's largest medical complex. Israeli forces ordered people trapped inside to evacuate before they target the entire facility, according to a Middle East Eye correspondent.

Thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes by the ongoing war have been seeking refuge in the hospital.

Early on Thursday morning, Israeli forces warned them that the air force would soon begin bombing the complex, and that they should surrender themselves.

"We warned you, we warned you, we warned you," an Israeli soldier could be heard saying on a loudspeaker. "Do not make a mistake, do not try us."

READ MORE: Israeli forces destroy al-Shifa surgical building and order evacuation

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked whether he agreed with the recent “Victory of Israel” conference, which called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, he said the ministers from his government who attended were “entitled to their opinions”.

This was, as usual, misleading. Just months earlier, he had reportedly tasked Ron Dermer, one of his closest aides, with exploring ways to “thin out” Gaza’s population.

The idea was to bypass the resistance of Egypt, the US and Europe to another mass wave of refugees, by opening up the sea as a humanitarian gesture.

Israel Hayom, the Israeli newspaper, which got a copy of the plan, noted: “The phenomenon of refugees in war zones is an accepted thing. Tens of millions of refugees have left war zones across the globe in just the last decade, from Syria to Ukraine. All of them were found to have an address in the countries that agreed to accept them as a humanitarian gesture.

“So why would Gaza be different? … The sea is also open to the Gazans. At its will, Israel opens the sea crossing and enables a mass escape to European and African countries.”

Opinion by David Hearst.

READ MORE: Israel is dragging the US into a future regional war

The Palestinian Prisoners Society said that Israeli forces arrested 25 Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem over Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.

The arrests focused largely on Hebron and Jerusalem, but some also took place in the Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem regions.

Analysis by the United Nations Satellite Centre (Unosat) found that 35 percent of Gaza's buildings have been destroyed or damaged by Israel's war on the enclave. 

Unosat used high-resolution satellite images collected on 29 February and compared them with images taken before and after the start of the war in October.

It found that 88,868 structures had been damaged or destroyed.

That included identifying 31,198 structures as destroyed, 16,908 as severely damaged, and 40,762 as moderately damaged.

That is an increase of nearly 20,000 damaged structures compared to its previous analysis in January.

"The governorates of Khan Younis and Gaza have experienced the most significant rise in damage, with Khan Yunis seeing 12,279 additional damaged structures and Gaza experiencing 2,010," Unosat said.

"Khan Younis City has been hit particularly hard, with 6,663 newly destroyed structures."

The Israeli military has said that it killed more than 50 "terrorists" around al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.

"Over the past day, more than 50 terrorists were eliminated during exchanges of fire, and terrorist infrastructure and weapons storage facilities were located. Since the start of the operation, over 140 terrorists have been eliminated in the area of the hospital," it said on Thursday. 

Israeli authorities did not provide any evidence that those killed were Hamas fighters. 

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of operating within hospitals, a charge that the group has consistently denied. 

Hamas said on Wednesday that Palestinians killed at the hospital by Israeli forces earlier this week were not its fighters, but wounded and displaced people sheltering in the facility.

More than 31,988 Palestinians have been killed and 74,188 wounded by Israeli forces since 7 October, the Palestinian health ministry said on Thursday.

At least 65 Palestinians were killed and 92 wounded over the past 24 hours, it added in a statement.

Al Araby TV reports that the Israeli army is shelling homes in the vicinity of Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital.

This comes after displaced people in the hospital were told by the army to evacuate as some reporters believe they plan to destroy the complex.

Two more deaths were reported from the Israeli raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, bringing the total to four, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

A prominent MP has raised concerns that the UK government is allowing Israel to “mark their own homework” when it comes to compliance with international humanitarian law in Gaza, Middle East Eye can report.

In a letter sent to Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell on Wednesday, and seen exclusively by MEE, Brendan O'Hara MP questioned which organisations and charities have been providing evidence to the government regarding Israel's legal compliance.

In particular, O'Hara, the Scottish National Party's spokesperson on foreign affairs, said he was concerned that the UK "takes confidence in Israel's compliance with IHL [international humanitarian law] based on the mere presence of lawyers embedded with the Israeli army. 

"While internal legal scrutiny within military operations is acknowledged as important… it is essential that compliance with [international humanitarian law] is scrutinised by an accepted and impartial international body such as the UN or the ICC," he wrote.

READ MORE: UK allowing Israel to 'mark own homework' over war crimes scrutiny, MP says