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

Following the Israeli parliament's approval of a law enabling senior ministers to close foreign news outlets considered a security threat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to "act immediately to stop" the operations of Al Jazeera in Israel.

“Al Jazeera will no longer be broadcast from Israel,” Netanyahu wrote in a post on X after the law was approved on Monday. “I intend to act immediately in accordance with the new law to stop the channel’s activity.”

In a Knesset vote that concluded 70-10, the newly passed law grants the prime minister and the communications minister the power to shut down foreign networks functioning within Israel and seize their equipment, should they be considered to pose "harm to the state’s security".

The White House said on Monday that if reports regarding Israel's attempts to close the news network Al Jazeera are accurate, it would be "concerning."

The Palestinian Authority is seeking a vote by the United Nations Security Council within this month to grant it full membership status in the global organisation, the Palestinian UN representative told Reuters on Monday.

According to Riyad Mansour, the goal is to have the Security Council make a determination during a ministerial meeting on the Middle East set for 18 April, though a vote has not been scheduled yet.

He told Reuters that the Palestinian request for full membership from 2011 remains unresolved, as the 15-member council has yet to make a formal decision on it.

“The intention is to put the application to a vote in the Security Council this month,” he added.

In 2011, the Security Council committee reviewed the Palestinian membership application for several weeks. However, it failed to achieve a unanimous consensus, leading to the absence of a council vote on a resolution to endorse Palestinian membership.

Diplomats at the time indicated that the Palestinians lacked sufficient backing within the Security Council to compel a US veto despite the US expressing its opposition to the bid. For a resolution to pass, it requires a minimum of nine affirmative votes and no objections from any of the permanent members: the US, Russia, China, France, or Britain.

Iran’s state media reported on Monday that Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, during a conversation with his Syrian counterpart, said Tehran attributes responsibility to Israel for the outcomes of the strike on its consulate in Damascus, Syria.

The strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus is “a breach of all international conventions”, Amirabdollahian said.

The Iranian consulate in Damascus was demolished in what has been reported by Syrian and Iranian media as an Israeli air strike, marking a significant escalation in Middle East tensions.

Israeli air strikes targeting the Iranian consulate in Syria's capital on Monday killed at least five individuals, among them a high-ranking officer of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian state media reported.

"At least five people were killed in the attack which was carried out by F-35 fighter jets," Hossein Akbari, Iran's ambassador to Damascus, said in front of the levelled building in an interview broadcast on state TV.

He did not give the source of his information about the aircraft.

Israel has reportedly targeted Iran's consulate and its ambassador's residence in Syria, according to Iran's SNN news website.

Syrian air defences intercepted "hostile targets" in Damascus, Syrian state media reported earlier on Monday.

Israel's army has withdrawn from al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza following a two week siege, leaving in its wake destroyed buildings and piles of dead bodies.

The complex - the largest medical facility in all of Palestine - was left in complete ruins. Military officials said on Monday that its forces killed 200 people and arrested 900 during its 15-day military assault on the hospital. Gaza's civil defence put the figure of those killed at around 300.

The structure of the complex was damaged in every building, with destroyed equipment and paperwork strewn everywhere. 

At the special surgery unit, one of the newest buildings in the hospital, all that remained was piles of rocks and metal.

Among the units destroyed were the kidney and maternity buildings, the morgues, refrigeration facilities, as well as the outpatient clinics building.

Scores of dead bodies, including of children, women and the elderly, filled the streets near the complex.

"My son, my son, my beloved son!" a woman screamed out, weeping as she held her dead son wrapped under white sheets.

Read more: Israeli troops withdraw from al-Shifa hospital, leaving piles of dead bodies

A Palestinian surgeon was among those killed by Israeli forces during its two week raid on al-Shifa Hospital. 

Ahmad Maqadmeh was killed during the siege, according to his friend and colleague, British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sitta. 

"We worked together in the Great Marches of Return and the 2021 war and then this recent war. His dedication was unlike anything I have ever seen. We will never forgive," Abu Sitta wrote on X. 

"He spent this war going from Shifa hospital to Al Quds Hospital and when he was free he would join me at Al Ahli. Always dedicated, always wanting to learn.

"He refused to leave the north and kept sending me photos of his surgeries. He leaves behind a wife and baby."

Abu Sitta added that Maqadmeh was a former recipient of the UK's Royal College of Surgeons' humanitarian innovation fellowship. 

Youssef Srour did not know if Ramadan had begun or not. 

Arrested on 18 October from his home in Ni'lin, west of Ramallah in the centre of the occupied West Bank, Srour was in an Israeli prison in the Negev (Naqab) desert on 10 March.

"The prisoners don't have any means of communicating with the outside world. If the jailers find a wire in the room or batteries, all the prisoners are beaten, punished, taken out of the room and all their belongings are confiscated," he told Middle East Eye, explaining that they all estimated the start of Ramadan based on when they had arrived at the prison.

After six months in administrative detention, the 49-year-old Palestinian was discharged to hospital a week ago. He was seriously underweight and showed signs of fatigue and neglect. Srour told MEE that he could not count the number of times he had been brutally beaten during those months in prison.

Since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October, the Israeli army has carried out a massive, ongoing arrest campaign across the occupied West Bank, targeting almost 8,000 Palestinians, including women and children, the sick and elderly. 

Read more: Palestinian prisoners living 'never-ending nightmare' in Israeli detention this Ramadan

The Israeli army has created “kill zones” that have targeted and indiscriminately killed civilians in the Gaza Strip, according to a new report.

Senior army officials and soldiers who have served on the frontlines confirmed to Haaretz that its forces had killed civilians and later claimed they were terrorists because they were in a particular area designated as a so-called "combat zone".

“It's astonishing to hear the reports after every operation regarding how many terrorists were killed," a senior officer within the army’s southern command told Haaretz. 

“You don't need to be a genius to realise that you don't have hundreds or dozens of armed men running through the streets of Khan Younis or Jabaliya, fighting the IDF."

Officers also admitted to Haaretz that some of the Palestinians killed in so-called “combat” or “kill” zones may have been going back to their homes or searching for food as fears of a famine in northern Gaza continue to mount. 

Read more: Israeli army created ‘kill zones’ that targeted unarmed Palestinian civilians

Israel has a "refugee problem". So wrote the editor-in-chief of Israeli newspaper Haaretz in a recent article.

Aluf Benn explained that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on the verge of having to decide how to manage the huge number of Palestinians who were forcibly displaced from northern Gaza after Israel invaded the area after 7 October 2023.

“The issue,” Benn wrote, “is whether Israel will allow Palestinians to return to the northern Gaza Strip, from which they were expelled at the beginning of the war, or whether they will be permanently displaced from there, leaving the area under Israeli control.”

Note the use of language and the passivity of describing ethnic cleansing (though it’s unclear if Benn himself has a strong opinion about the subject).

Haaretz is a prominent and daily opponent of Netanyahu, but seems torn between the mainstream Israeli view of the Gaza onslaught, publishing a slew of nationalistic and militaristic stories in the last six months, and a more humane position that correctly understands Israel is committing horrific abuses in Gaza that will stain the country forever. 

Opinion by Antony Loewenstein

READ MORE: Western obsession with Netanyahu is misplaced. Most Israelis want war to go on

The Palestinian health ministry said that the death toll from Israel's war on Gaza has risen to 32,845, with 63 killed over the past 24 hours.

An additional 94 people have been wounded, bringing the total to 75,392 since the start of the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Knesset to pass the so-called Al Jazeera law this evening, which would allow the government to shut down foreign news networks operating in Israel.

The law would allow the prime minister and the minister of communications to order the closure of foreign networks in Israel and confiscate their equipment if they believe they pose "an actual harm to the state's security".

Netanyahu promised to "immediately act to close Al Jazeera" after the law passes.

The prime minister's Likud party said that he spoke with coalition whip Ofir Katz to ask him to ensure the bill's passing through second and third readings today.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hernia surgery was successful, his office and doctors at the Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem said.

"He is awake, recovering and speaking with his family," said Alon Pikarsky, the hospital's director of general surgery, who worked on Netanyahu.

Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth reports that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he is vetoing the convening of the committee supposed to approve the purchase of F-15 and F-35 fighters jets for 35 billion shekels ($9.55bn) over disagreements regarding the defence budget.

Security officials reportedly criticised Smotrich, claiming he brings politics into the "cockpit" and "forgets that we are in a multi-arena war".