Live: Strike announced in Israel amid mounting anger at Netanyahu
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged for Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement on a ceasefire deal on Monday, warning that the latest push for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal was probably the best and possibly last opportunity.
“This is a decisive moment, probably the best, maybe the last opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security,” Blinken told reporters before meeting Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday morning.
The Abandon Biden campaign that for months worked in key swing states to turn voters away from US President Joe Biden over his unwavering support for Israel’s war on Gaza has officially relaunched its movement with a new aim: Abandon Kamala Harris.
Organisers within the campaign had been deliberating over their next steps after Biden dropped out of the presidential race last month, and told Middle East Eye they would be making the official announcement during a press conference on Monday in Chicago, where the Democratic National Convention is taking place.
"On Monday, we're beginning Abandon Harris," Hassan Abdel Salam, a human rights professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and a founder of Abandon Biden, told Middle East Eye.
The campaign held an all-day conference in Chicago on Sunday, where they worked with Abandon Biden leaders to recalibrate their mission and strategy to inform voters about why they shouldn't vote for Harris.
"In terms of electoral strategy, at the very minimum, we ask the American people to make sure that they never vote for the genocide or Kamala Harris," Abdel Salam said.
At this point, we want people to "receive the information, the message that she is a genocider and that morally, we can never support her, and that strategically, we need to punish her in order for us to buy power, because we've been thoroughly ignored".
Read more: Abandon Biden targets Harris over support for Israel
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared that the North African country's military was ready to enter Gaza to build three hospitals within 20 days once the border with Egypt would reopen.
Speaking Sunday during an election rally, Tebboune vowed to also send hundreds of doctors to the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave and "help rebuild what the Zionists destroyed".
Tebboune, who is running for a second presidential term in an election slated for 7 September, was speaking to supporters in the city of Constantine.
"Palestine is not the issue of the Palestinians only, it is our issue too," Tebboune told the crowd.
"Some say this cohesion between Palestine and Algeria is meaningless in light of the distance. [But] we are not far, the distance is only geographical, the hearts are with each other," he added.
Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip, the Rafah crossing, has been shuttered since Israeli troops invaded it in May.
Read more: Algeria's Tebboune says army ready to build hospitals in Gaza once Egypt border reopens
The Scottish government will no longer hold meetings with Israeli ambassadors until "real progress" is made in Gaza ceasefire talks, it announced on Monday.
The ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) administration has faced backlash after it emerged that Angus Robertson, its external affairs secretary, had met with Israel's deputy ambassador to the UK.
Robertson apologised for the meeting not being "strictly limited" to ceasefire talks, and said that further invitations by Israel would be rejected unless progress was made towards a truce, humanitarian aid into Gaza and until Israel "co-operates fully with its international obligations on the investigation of genocide and war crimes".
It comes as an SNP lawmaker was expelled from the party after posting on X: "If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they would have killed ten times as many."
Speaking to Sky News, John Mason MSP said: "It's never my intention to upset people, but I'm not afraid of upsetting people in the sense of if I think something important needs to be said."
Last month's Israeli air strikes on Yemen's port city of Hodeidah could constitute a war crime, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.
The rights group described the attacks as potentially "unlawful, indiscriminate or disproportionate", and said they were likely to impact civilians in the country.
Israel carried out air strikes on the Yemeni city after a drone launched by the country's Houthi movement, also known as Ansar Allah, hit central Tel Aviv, killing one person.
The Houthis, who control Sanaa and most of northern and western Yemen, have been launching drone attacks towards Israel in response to its ongoing military campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.
"Serious violations of the laws of war committed wilfully, that is deliberately or recklessly, are war crimes,” HRW said.
Read more: Hodeidah port attack by Israel was a 'potential war crime'
Egypt and Israel have reached an understanding that would allow an Israeli security presence along the Egyptian-Gaza border in exchange for the Rafah crossing being reopened and operated by Palestinians, three senior Egyptian sources told Middle East Eye.
According to an Egyptian diplomat, an official at the General Intelligence Service and another at the Military Intelligence, Israel presented two options for the border area, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.
One is for Israel to maintain boots on the ground, as it has since its military pushed into the area in May.
The second would be to replace the troops with an underground barrier, electronic monitoring equipment and occasional patrols.
Egypt said it would agree to the options if the Palestinian factions, particularly Hamas, were on board.
However, Hamas, which is currently battling Israel in the Gaza Strip, insists it will not agree to any ceasefire deal that does not ensure the Israelis totally withdraw from the enclave, including the Philadelphi Corridor.
Sources close to Hamas told MEE they were not aware of what Israel and Egypt had agreed, but such a deal would not be surprising or necessarily acceptable to the movement.
Read more: Egypt agrees to Israeli control of Gaza border in return for Rafah reopening
The UN refugee agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, has said that 207 of its staff members had been killed by Israel's war on Gaza, "including in the line of duty".
"They were engineers, teachers, medical staff. They were humanitarian workers. On #WorldHumanitarianDay and every day we remember and pay tribute to them all," the agency said on its official X account on Monday.
207 @UNRWA team members have been killed in #Gaza since the war began – including in the line of duty.
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) August 19, 2024
They were engineers, teachers, medical staff. They were humanitarian workers. On #WorldHumanitarianDay and every day we remember and pay tribute to them all.#ActForHumanity pic.twitter.com/NsPA98am88
Lawyers seeking an order to prevent the UK government continuing to grant export licences to firms selling arms to Israel have submitted claims of Palestinians being tortured and in grave danger from Israeli bombardment.
The Guardian reported on Monday that 14 witness statements, covering over 100 pages, had come from Palestinian and western doctors working in Gaza hospitals, ambulance drivers, civil defence workers and aid workers. They stated that Palestinians have been tortured, left untreated in hospital and have been unable to escape Israeli bombardment.
The case was brought forward by several NGOs, including Al-Haq, Amnesty International, Oxfam and Global Legal Action Network (GLAN).
One of the witnesses, Canadian kidney specialist Ben Thomson, said he treated a 60-year-old who was stripped naked by Israeli forces, had his wrists bound tightly for three days and was dragged on the floor.
"Every part of the healthcare system has been targeted and destroyed and is now completely incapable of providing care. So many people are dying from issues that are completely treatable," Thomson said.
The previous Conservative government said there was insufficient risk that UK weapons were being used in war crimes. The current Labout administration is currently reviewing arms export licences.
The Israeli military announced the death of a soldier in a Hezbollah drone attack on northern Israel on Monday morning.
The attack, which hit at least two towns, killed the soldier in Ya'ara and injured several others.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office says his three-hour meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was "positive" and that there was a "good atmosphere".
"The prime minister reiterated Israel’s commitment to the latest American proposal regarding the release of our hostages – taking into account Israel’s security needs, which he insists on firmly," the office said.
A source in the Palestinian Joint Operations Room, a front uniting Palestinian armed groups in Gaza (including Hamas and Islamic Jihad), told Al Jazeera they have "clear evidence that the UK is contributing to the intelligence effort in Gaza for the benefit of the occupation".
The source added that "British participation directly contributed to the killing of thousands of women and children in the Gaza Strip".
The source called on the UK to cease its alleged intelligence cooperation with Israel, adding that it is done in partnership with the US.
عاجل | مصدر بغرفة عمليات المقاومة للجزيرة: نملك أدلة واضحة أن بريطانيا تساهم في الجهد الاستخباري بغزة لصالح الاحتلال
— الجزيرة - عاجل (@AJABreaking) August 19, 2024
In the 10 months since the latest war in Gaza erupted, European leaders have produced an astonishing deluge of statements, which reflect disturbing cognitive dissonance and outrageous bias.
Like a broken record, they incessantly repeat the mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself”. They parrot this when compelled to proffer any criticism of the Israeli excesses that have so far caused more than 40,000 deaths in the Gaza Strip.
Even when their spokespersons issue standard statements mentioning civilian casualties, the first sentence is usually: “Israel has the right to defend itself.” The message is unequivocal: Israel’s right comes first; everything else is secondary.
It is hard to believe that, over the last 10 months, Europe's decision-makers have not been briefed by their aides about the legal realities of what has been happening in Gaza and the West Bank before and since 7 October.
READ MORE: European leaders are stoking the flames of a Middle East inferno, opinion by Marco Carnelos
German airline Lufthansa announced the suspension of its flights to Beirut, Tel Aviv, Amman and Erbil, Iraq until 26 August.
The extended suspension comes as tensions in the region remain high, with Hezbollah and Iran expected to respond to Israel's twin assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders in Beirut and Tehran.
Gaza's government media office announced the death of Ibrahim Marwan Mahareb, who worked as a journalist in the enclave for several media outlets.
Mahareb is the 169th journalist to have been killed in Israel's war on Gaza, according to the media office.
Hezbollah announced the death of two of its members on Monday.
While the group mostly does not specify the incidents in which its fighters were killed while fighting against Israel, Lebanes authorities reported that an Israeli strike on Houla had killed two people earlier on Monday.
