Gaza live: Israeli protesters demand ceasefire as war enters 10th month

Norway's largest pension fund, KLP, announced it will no longer invest in the US industrial group Caterpillar Inc due to its sales to the Israeli military, AFP reports.

"For a long time, Caterpillar has supplied bulldozers and other equipment that has been used to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure to clear the way for Israeli settlements," Kiran Aziz, head of responsible investments at KLP, said in a statement.

"It has also been alleged that the company's equipment is being used by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in connection with its military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas attack on October 7 last year," she added.

KLP said that there is a "risk that the US company may be contributing to human rights abuses and violation of international law in the West Bank and Gaza".

The fund said that since Caterpillar has not provided assurances that it is doing anything on this matter, they have decided to divest from it.

KLP said owned Caterpillar stock valued at 728 million Norwegian crowns ($68.6m) earlier in June, which it has now divested.

Our live coverage from Gaza will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are some of the day's key developments:

• Gaza death toll tops 37,658, with 32 people killed in the past 24 hours. Additionally, 86,237 people have been wounded since the start of the war

• Dozens of Israeli reservist soldiers have signed a letter stating their unwillingness to serve with the army in Gaza

• Around 96 percent of the Gaza Strip's population, or 2.15m people, face "high levels of acute food insecurity through September 2024", a report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) shows

• Israel's capture and subsequent closure of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt has prevented at least 2,000 Palestinian patients from leaving Gaza for treatement, a World Health Organisation official said on Tuesday

• The German Ministry of Education has drawn up lists of professors who don't toe the government line on Gaza in a bid to deprive them of future funding in academia, a move that is likely to stifle academic freedom

• The head of Hamas' political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Tuesday that "if Israel thinks that harming my family members will change my position and the resistance to the occupation, then it is delusional"

• On Tuesday, Germany enacted a landmark citizenship law that explicitly requires applicants to affirm the state of Israel’s right to exist

On 19 May, a Palestinian-American mother living in an apartment complex in Euless, Texas took her children for a swim in the building's pool. What followed was a violent altercation where a drunk woman allegedly made racist remarks and then proceeded to try and drown her three-year-old daughter.

Prosecutors are now seeking to treat the case as a hate crime, and rights groups say the incident is a symptom of the larger spike in anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia that has taken place in the United States since the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza in October.

“We are seeing a new level of bigotry here where a person deeply believes they get to decide, based on religion, spoken language and country of origin, whose kids deserve to stay alive and whose don’t," said Shaimaa Zayan, the operations manager for the Council on American Islamic Relations' Austin chapter.

The incident also drew comparisons to six-year-old Wadea al-Fayoume, who was killed in October when a man broke into his mother's apartment and stabbed him 26 times. Fayoume's mother was also injured in the incident.

Read more: Prosecutors treating attempted drowning of Palestinian-American child as hate crime

Residents in Gaza have provided footage showing an Israeli attack on the Abu Awad family's house in Beit Lahia, Al Jazeera reported. 

Local sources report that several people are still missing under the rubble as Civil Defence crews work to rescue them. Others are seen using their cell phones to assist in finding survivors. 

The footage also shows that children were among those wounded. 

The charitable foundation overseeing Wikipedia stated that it honors the choices made by its volunteer editors after a pressure campaign by pro-Israeli organisations urged the foundation to reverse a decision by editors who labeled the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as an unreliable source on Israel and Zionism.

Over 40 pro-Israeli groups signed a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation's board, arguing that this decision increases the Jewish community's susceptibility to antisemitism, reported the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA).

Wikipedia's editors voted last week to declare the ADL "generally unreliable" on Israel and Palestine as well as the issue of antisemitism, adding the organisation to a list of banned sources.

The report said that an "overwhelming majority" of Wikipedia editors voted to deem the organisation unreliable.

The decision puts the pro-Israel organisation, which has a long history of demonising Palestine activism, in a group alongside the National Inquirer, Newsmax, TMZ, and the conspiracist website Infowars.

"ADL no longer appears to adhere to a serious, mainstream and intellectually cogent definition of antisemitism, but has instead given into the shameless politicisation of the very subject that it was originally esteemed for being reliable on," wrote a Wikipedia editor known as Iskandar323, as reported by JTA.

The risks to humanitarian workers in Gaza are intolerable, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

"Humanitarian operations have repeatedly been in the crosshairs in Gaza," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday. "The risks, frankly, are becoming increasingly intolerable," Dujarric added according to Reuters. 

The UN is seeking to press Israel for more effective coordination with the aid groups which it has so far refused to to. 

"Every day, we assess the situation and look at how we can operate safely, both for our own staff, but most importantly for those who are receiving the aid," Dujarric said. "Every day we need to grab whatever opportunities we can."

There have been up to five major Israeli attacks on densely populated areas across the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera’s is reporting. 

Attacks included evacuation centres in Gaza City as well as tent sites in the western part of Khan Younis city. 

There have so far been no reports of casualties. 

Pro-Palestine activists have slammed US President Joe Biden's administration for "mischaracterising" a protest outside a California synagogue where real estate firms are accused of advertising properties for sale in the occupied West Bank.

The demonstration occurred outside the Adas Torah temple, an Orthodox synagogue near Beverly Hills in Los Angeles. Protesters wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags gathered outside the synagogue after seeing an advertisement that promoted residential homes for sale in "the best Anglo neighbourhoods in Israel".

Biden waded into the protest on Monday, saying on X he was "appalled by the scenes outside of Adas Torah… Intimidating Jewish congregants is dangerous, unconscionable, antisemitic and un-American".

Anti-war group CodePink, which organises pro-Palestine protests, slammed Biden for alleging that the demonstration was antisemitic.

Read more: 'Outrageous': Pro-Palestine activists slam Biden for labelling protest 'antisemitic'

Yemen's Houthis said on Tuesday that they had targeted the "Israeli MSC Sarah V" vessel in the Arabian Sea with a new ballistic missile that entered the service recently, Reuters reported. 

The secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has stated that the food crisis in Gaza has hit a “critical point.”

“Many people are already facing severe food insecurity, and the situation worsens each day. Children are especially affected, with many suffering from malnutrition,” Jagan Chapagain posted on X.

“In Rafah, recent hostilities have exacerbated the already dire humanitarian crisis, disrupting food distribution due to supply shortages and severely impacting people’s health."

An Israeli military court has prolonged the illegal detention of Rasha Hirzallah, a journalist from Nablus in the occupied West Bank working for the Palestinian news agency Wafa, until 11 August.

Initially detained in early June for alleged incitement on social media, Hirzallah has been held under administrative detention without charge or trial. Her detention order has been extended twice since then.

Azzam al-Shaer, a Palestinian child, died on Tuesday from malnutrition in Gaza, making him at least the fifth child to die of hunger in the last week as a result of Israel's offensive on the besieged enclave.

Al-Shaer, a young Palestinian boy, died at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City after the hospital was unable to obtain medicine to treat him, according to Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent in the Gaza Strip.

A video posted on X shows Azzam's small, emaciated corpse lying flat on a table. His cheeks hollowed out and his rib cage protruding. Azzam’s arms are shriveled.

"Azzam al-Shaer died of malnutrition as a result of the ongoing hunger war practised by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza," al-Ghoul wrote on X.

Read more: Palestinian child dies of malnutrition as hunger crisis rages

On Tuesday, Germany enacted a landmark citizenship law that explicitly requires applicants to affirm the state of Israel’s right to exist.

“Anyone who shares our values and makes an effort can now get a German passport more quickly and no longer has to give up part of their identity by giving up their old nationality,” said interior minister Nancy Faeser on Tuesday.

“But we have also made it just as clear: anyone who does not share our values ​​cannot get a German passport. We have drawn a crystal-clear red line here and made the law much stricter than before,” she added. 

“New test questions have been added on the topics of antisemitism, the right of the state of Israel to exist and Jewish life in Germany,” the interior ministry said.

The test will not ask prosepective citizens to affrim the right of a Palestinian state to exist. 

The Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday that Israel would prefer a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Lebanon's Iran-backed group Hezbollah, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Tuesday.

Gallant alongside Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, are preparing for potential arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC). 

On 20 May, ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced that he had requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, Canada renewed its advisory for citizens to leave Lebanon while possible, citing the escalating and unpredictable security situation stemming from the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. 

"My message to Canadians has been clear since the beginning of the crisis in the Middle East: It is not the time to travel to Lebanon. And for Canadians currently in Lebanon, it is time to leave, while commercial flights remain available," Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said in a statement, according to Reuters.