Gaza live: Biden moves ahead with military aid for Israel as it launches ground assaults on Rafah

Israeli officials have lashed out at the US for delaying arms shipments, saying the move could jeoprodise hostage talks.

According to a report by Axios, Israeli officials also said they are concerned the Biden administration decided to publicise the move.

The officials told their US counterparts that they believe the decision could entrench Hamas’s negotiating position.

The powerful pro-Israeli lobbying group Aipac has slammed President Joe Biden’s decision to delay arms shipments to Israel over Rafah.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee called on Congress “to demand” Biden reverse the decision.

“Delaying this arms transfer is a dangerous and counterproductive message. It emboldens Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and undermines America’s commitments to all our allies,” the group said on X.

The statement is a harbinger of further pressure Biden could face from the group heading into an election in November against former President Donald Trump.

House Republicans have introduced a bill that would revoke the visas of students arrested at pro-Palestinian demonstrations on US college campuses.

Republican Congressman Andy Ogles introduced legislation on Wednesday that would revoke the F, J, or M student visas of students arrested at college protests, including those arrested at encampments built in support of besieged Palestinians in Gaza.

“We do not need Hamas sympathizers on American soil breaking our laws and influencing our youth to hate America and freedom,” Republican Jeff Duncan, who co-signed the bill, said on X.

"You riot on behalf of a terrorist organization, then say goodbye to your visa."

The Eurovision song competition is facing intense scrutiny and accusations of discrimination after it rebuked Swedish-Palestinian pop star Eric Saade for wearing a keffiyeh scarf in the opening act of the semi-finals, Middle East Eye reports. 

Saade, whose father is of Palestinian origin, kicked off the first semi-final of the Eurovision song contest in Malmo, Sweden, on Tuesday evening with the traditional scarf which has come to symbolise Palestine wrapped around his wrist.

In response, the organisers of the contest, European Broadcasting Union, released a statement saying the move compromised the “non-political nature of the event”.

Social media users pushed back saying that the keffiyeh was a symbol of palestinian culture and Saade didn’t make any political statements.

Read More: Outrage after Swedish-Palestinian artist rebuked for wearing Palestinian scarf

Israeli bombardment of south Lebanon in seven months of cross-border hostilities with Hezbollah has caused more than $1.5bn in damage, a Lebanese official said on Wednesday.

Lebanon's Southern Council, an official body tasked with assessing the destruction, has estimated that since 8 October, the cost of "damage to buildings and institutions stands at more than one billion dollars".

Infrastructure, including water, electricity, roads and health services has also suffered damage estimated at around an additional $500m, according to the figures provided by council chief Hashem Haidar.

The main maternity hospital in Rafah has stopped admitting patients, the UN said on Wednesday.

The United Nations Population Fund told Reuters that al-Helal al-Emirati Maternity Hospital had started turning away patients.

Although the Emirati hospital has only five delivery beds, it has been conducting about 85 out of a daily total of 180 births in Gaza amid the war.

Roughly 200 Palestinians are being forcibly displaced from Rafah every hour after Israel ordered them to leave the area, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa) said.

"The displacement is ongoing and people are leaving towards Khan Younis and the Middle Areas,” Unrwa communications director Juliette Touma said. 

Touma added that “around 10,000” Palestinians have fled Rafah since Israel launched its offensive on Monday. 

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham railed at a Senate hearing after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Biden Administration was pausing an arms shipment to Israel.

In a testy exchange, he tried to compare Israel’s war on Gaza and the staggering civilian death toll to the US’s decision to drop nuclear bombs on Japan. He repeatedly questioned whether Austin would have supported dropping a nuclear bomb in order to end WWII.

“This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki on steroids,” he added, arguing that Israel needed to use whatever weapons systems it wants in order to finish the war in Gaza.

“Everybody around them wants to kill all the Jews," Graham said. “If we stop weapons necessary to destroy the enemies of the state of Israel, we will pay a price…it is absurd." 

The University of Glasgow has agreed to deepen medical collaboration with the the Arab American University Palestine (AAUP) in a new memorandum of understanding.

The University of Glasgow will host students from AAUP  “to gain experience of clinical practice in the UK”.

AAUP is based in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin confirmed that the Biden administration has delayed a weapons shipment to Israel over concerns about its invasion of Rafah.

Austin’s comments at a Senate hearing mark the first public acknowledgment from the Biden administration that it has delayed arms shipments over frustration with Israel.

Austin said the White House has "been very clear...from the very beginning that Israel shouldn’t launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battlespace,” he said.

“As we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions," adding that a final decision hasn't been made yet. 

Josh Paul, a former US state department official who resigned over the “expanded and expedited” provision of lethal arms to Israel, has told Middle East Eye that the Biden administration’s decision to suspend a bomb shipment to Israel was “not a moment to celebrate”.

“Exactly seven months ago today I wrote to colleagues in the State Department warning that ‘maybe the best thing for Israel right now is not security assistance in the sort of volume that makes them think they can afford to just ignore the Palestinian question and hope that, cordoned off, it will somehow just go away’,” Paul said. 

“Now, finally, over 200 days later, it has been reported that the Biden administration has finally acted to suspend a shipment of 2,000lb and 500lb bombs to the Israeli military. 

“After seven months and over 35,000 dead Palestinians, 15,000 of them children, mostly killed by American weapons, this one single pause is noteworthy, but it is not a moment to celebrate.”

Paul told MEE: “Rather than a one-off pause of a shipment as a means of exerting momentary and overdue leverage, this needs to be the start of a sea-change in American policy towards the provision of security assistance to Israel. 

“We must enforce our own laws on arms exports and grant military assistance. And we must ask whether our lethal military assistance to Israel brings security, or disincentivizes the true road to peace.” 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), has told a media briefing that "we only have enough fuel to run health services in the south [of Gaza] for three more days".  

“We are deeply concerned about Israel’s increased military activities in Rafah, where most of Gaza’s people have fled for safety. An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people have left Rafah for Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, but more than 1.4 million people remain at risk in Rafah, including 600,000 children," Tedros said.

“Already, one of Rafah’s three hospitals – the an-Najjar hospital – has had to shut down. Its patients have moved elsewhere, and hospital staff are removing supplies and some equipment to safeguard them. The Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza remains closed, which is a major access points for supplies into Gaza." 

"Fuel that we expected to be allowed in today has not been allowed in, meaning we only have enough fuel to run health services in the south for three more days," Tedros told the briefing. 

The WHO has some supplies in warehouses and hospitals, but will not be able to sustain its work unless more aid flows into Gaza.

"WHO has no intention of withdrawing from Rafah and will stay and deliver alongside our partners," Tedros said. 

Israel has abandoned its goals of freeing the captives in Gaza, instead seeking to establish a long-term presence with its Rafah ground offensive and pursue top Palestinian leaders, Israeli military officers have told Middle East Eye.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, three officers, one of whom is serving in Gaza, questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy in the ongoing war on Gaza, which has killed at least 34,800 Palestinians and failed to return captives taken by Hamas on 7 October.  

One officer told MEE the government’s aims were unclear and the objective of rescuing captives and destroying Hamas had “collapsed”.

“Netanyahu's operations in Gaza are fundamentally aimed at ... hunting down Yahya Sinwar,” said the officer in Gaza, adding that the war had become “personal” for the Israeli premier. 

Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in the enclave, is Israel’s number one target and has not been seen in public since the war began. 

Read more.

A third mass grave has been discovered in the ruins of Gaza's al-Shifa Hospital. So far 49 bodies have been recovered from it, according to the government media office in Gaza.

Seven mass graves have been uncovered across the Palestinian enclave during the course of the war. In total, 520 bodies have been found in these graves.

"We hold the American administration, the international community, and the Israeli occupation fully responsible for these mass graves and this blatant aggression against humanity," the media office said in a statement.

"The occupation still has the green light to continue these crimes against humanity with full American support," it said. 

On 1 April, the Israeli army withdrew from al-Shifa after laying siege to the hospital complex for two weeks. The military left piles of dead bodies and destroyed buildings in its wake and executed Palestinians who tried to escape the besieged medical complex.

Israeli officials, executives and entrepreneurs told Reuters that while Israel's relations with the United Arab Emirates have remained intact throughout the war in Gaza, they seem to be "less in your face".

Six bankers and lawyers in the UAE said that business ties between Israeli and Emirati companies have endured the war, but few new deals are taking place, as the UAE government is wary about promoting relations with Israel at the moment.

While a UAE official did not directly respond to Reuters's question on the country's economic relationship with Israel during the war, they said that diplomatic and political dialogue with Israel has faciliated the delivery of aid to the people of Gaza.

Reuters said the UAE is "the only Arab state still hosting an Israeli ambassador".