Gaza live: Israeli attack hits Unrwa centre

Hezbollah rockets fired at northern Israel have sparked fires that damaged buildings, forcing evacuations of residents from some areas, according to Israeli police. 

According to the Times of Israel, firefighters have controlled a blaze in the community of Kadita but teams were still battling another in the Biriya Forest with the help of fire-fighting aircraft.

כוחות של מחוז צפון פועלים בשעות האחרונות במספר מוקדי שריפות בעקבות ירי הטילים הבוקר

נכון לשעה זו עיקר הפעילות מתמקדת ביישוב קדיתא, לאחר שהאש שפרצה בשטח פתוח התפשטה לתחומי היישוב ופגעה במבנים. בהתאם להערכת מצב, הוחלט על פינוי מספר בתים בקו הראשון לשטחים הפתוחים והכוחות עוסקים כעת… pic.twitter.com/AwV9SZLi12

— משטרת ישראל (@IL_police) June 12, 2024

Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine said on Wednesday that the group vows to increase the intensity, force and quantity of its operations against Israel after the killing of senior commander Taleb Abdallah. 

Reporting by Reuters

Israel hasn’t just crossed the Biden administration’s pretend “red lines” in Gaza. With its massacre at Nuseirat refugee camp at the weekend, Israel drove a bulldozer through them.

On Saturday, an Israeli military operation to free four Israelis held captive by Hamas since its 7 October attack on Israel resulted in the killing of more than 270 Palestinians, many of them women and children.

The true death toll may never be known. Untold numbers of men, women and children are still under rubble from the bombardment, crushed to death, or trapped and suffocating, or expiring slowly from dehydration if they cannot be dug out in time.

Many hundreds more are suffering agonising injuries - should their wounds not kill them - in a situation where there are almost no medical facilities left after Israel’s destruction of hospitals and its mass kidnap of Palestinian medical personnel. Further, there are no drugs to treat the victims, given Israel’s months-long imposition of an aid blockade.

Israelis and American Jewish organisations - so ready to judge Palestinians for cheering attacks on Israel - celebrated the carnage caused in freeing the Israeli captives, who could have returned home months ago had Israel been ready to agree on a ceasefire.

Videos even show Israelis dancing in the street.

According to reports, the bloody Israeli operation in central Gaza may have killed three other captives, one of them possibly an American citizen.

In comments to the Haaretz newspaper published on Sunday, Louis Har, a hostage freed back in February, observed of his own captivity: “Our greatest fear was the IDF's planes and the concern that they would bomb the building we were in.”

He added: “We weren't worried that they’d [referring to Hamas] do something to us all of a sudden. We didn't object to anything. So I wasn't afraid they'd kill me.”

The Israeli media reported Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant describing Saturday’s operation as “one of the most heroic and extraordinary operations I have witnessed over the course of 47 years serving in Israel’s defence establishment”.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is currently seeking an arrest warrant for Gallant, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges include efforts to exterminate the people of Gaza through planned starvation.

Read more: The day the West defined ‘success’ as a massacre of 270 Palestinians by Jonathan Cook

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken touched down in Doha on Wednesday for talks with key mediator Qatar after Hamas gave its response to a US-led proposal for a ceasefire in war-ravaged Gaza.

Blinken, on a four-country tour around the Middle East to push Hamas to accept the truce plan, will meet Qatari officials, who have transmitted messages to the Palestinian group.

Hamas, responding to the plan laid out on 31 May by US President Joe Biden, proposed amendments late Tuesday including a ceasefire timeline and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, according to a source familiar with the talks.

Reporting by AFP 

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza has once again issued a plea for fuel to operate generators in health centres across Gaza City.

It said shortages of fuel, caused by an Israeli siege, are threatening to stop the only oxygen station in Gaza City, dialysis treatment machines and ambulances from operating. 

This would expose the "lives of dozens of sick and wounded people to inevitable death," it said in a statement.

“We appeal to all relevant, international and humanitarian institutions to intervene quickly to bring in the necessary fuel, in addition to the electric generators and spare parts needed for maintenance.”

Israeli forces blew up a residential block containing several houses in the al-Shabura refugee camp in southern Rafah on Wednesday, according to local media. 

This comes as Israeli troops advance into the densely-populated area amid heavy clashes with Palestinian fighters. 

Al-Shabura is officially part of the Rafah refugee camp, which was established by the Unrwa in 1949. 

It is located about 2 km south-east of Rafah's city centre. 

Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar has revealed details of Hamas's response to the latest US-mediated ceasefire proposal, which the Palestinian group submitted to Qatar and Egypt on Tuesday.

The Hezbollah-affiliated publication reports that Hamas has demanded that a temporary ceasefire becomes permanent by the end of the first 42-day phase of the agreement, and that Israeli forces completely withdraw from Gaza within the same time frame. 

Here are the main points: 

• On day one of the first phase, a temporary ceasefire comes into effect and Israeli forces withdraw from populated areas. 

• On day three, Israeli forces begin to completely withdraw from the Rafah crossing, the Philadelphi corridor and the so-called Netzarim corridor, which dissects the Gaza Strip from east to west in the middle area. 

• By day seven, Israel's withdrawal from the specified areas shall be completed. 

• By the end of the first phase on day 42, Israeli forces shall completely withdraw from the Gaza Strip leaving no soldiers within the Palestinian territory.  

• Regarding prisoner exchanges, Hamas said it would release 33 Israeli captives, dead or alive, in the first phase. The captives would be released in stages, with three people released three days apart. 

• If Israel doesn't commit to a complete withdrawal from Gaza by day seven, Hamas will halt the captives' release. 

• Hamas rejects any Israeli conditions or vetoes on which Palestinian prisoners would be released in exchange for the Israeli captives.

• The first phase shall end with a "declaration of restoring sustainable calm, which means a complete cessation of all military operations". 

• Hamas also asked that Russia, China and Turkey be added as guarantors. 

"Mutilation" means to severely cut off one part of the body from the rest, to disintegrate a part from the whole, but also to leave a mark of violence on the whole, where every look at the mutilated body invokes the memory of violence and inspires terror.

Mutilation also impacts the perception or purpose of the body: if a book has been cut through using scissors, it remains a book, and yet it cannot be read in the same way prior to mutilation. Perhaps the intention of mutilating a book is precisely so that it cannot be read.

The history of mutilation, therefore, is the history of suffering and the experience of violence that intends to change the existence of the object/subject.

Israel is an ethnonational state, or what I call a carceralopolis, which privileges the Jewish citizens of the state based on fictive ethnic roots, and grants them extraordinary carceral control over native Palestinians.

Such a state racially oppresses a subordinate group through invisibilisation, spatial stigmatisation, and what the German filmmaker Hito Steyerl described as the "design of killing", an extensive and planned amalgamation of military and technological force, perversion of law, and population transfer.

Since October 2023, the military assault against Gaza and its inhabitants has revealed another strategy that the Zionists have long had: the mutilation of Palestine, which dates back to the early 20th century.

Read more: The mutilation of Palestine has been a strategy of Israel since its inception by Aarushi Punia

A merchant ship issued a distress call after being struck in the Red Sea off Yemen, a security firm said on Wednesday, in what appeared to be the latest attack by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement.

The ship was hit about 68 nautical miles southwest of the port city of Hodeidah, maritime security firm Ambrey said.

The company "assessed the vessel aligned with the Houthi target profile at the time of the incident", it said in a statement, without giving further details.

Reporting by AFP 

Massive rocket barrages were fired from Lebanon toward Israel on Wednesday after the assassination of a senior Hezbollah commander by Israel last night. 

Here's what you need to know: 

• Israel killed Taleb Abdallah, reportedly the "most senior" Hezbollah member slain since the war began, along with three other fighters in an air strike late on Tuesday in the village of Jwaya in south Lebanon. 

• Hezbollah said Wednesday morning it fired several rockets at various Israeli targets in response to the assassination. The targets included a military factory, two military command centres and a surveillance unit's headquarters in different bases. 

• The Israeli military said 160 projectiles were fired at northern Israel from Lebanon since the morning. Not all rockets were intercepted.

• According to Israeli media, the rockets hit a factory in Sassa and sparked fires elsewhere. There were no immediate reports of injuries. 

• Sirens warning of incoming rockets were sounded across areas as deep as 50 km from Lebanese territory. They were heard across the Galilee, including in the main city Safed, and for the first time in Tiberias. 

An independent United Nations investigation concluded Wednesday that Israel had committed crimes against humanity during the war in Gaza, including the crime of "extermination".

"The crimes against humanity of extermination; murder; gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys; forcible transfer; and torture and inhuman and cruel treatment were committed," the Commission of Inquiry (COI) said in a report, due to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council next week.

The findings were from two parallel reports, one focusing on the 7 October Hamas-led attack and another on Israel's war on Gaza, published by the COI, which has an unusually broad mandate to collect evidence and identify perpetrators of international crimes committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The reports, which cover the conflict through to end-December, found that both Israel and Palestinian armed group committed war crimes including torture; murder or wilful killing; outrages upon personal dignity; and inhuman or cruel treatment.

Israel also committed additional war crimes including starvation as a method of warfare, it said, saying Israel not only failed to provide essential supplies like food, water, shelter and medicine to Palestinians but "acted to prevent the supply of those necessities by anyone else".

Some of the war crimes such as murder also constituted crimes against humanity by Israel, the COI statement said, using a term reserved for the most serious international crimes knowingly committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilians.

"The immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable result of a strategy undertaken with intent to cause maximum damage, disregarding the principles of distinction, proportionality and adequate precautions," the COI statement said.

Israel does not cooperate with the commission, which it says has an anti-Israel bias. The COI says Israel obstructs its work and prevented investigators from accessing both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel condemned the report and accused the commission of "systematic anti-Israeli discrimination".

The COI "has once again proven that its actions are all in the service of a narrow-led political agenda against Israel," said Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

Hamas did not immediately comment.

Reporting by AFP and Reuters

Explosions were heard across northern Israel after a massive salvo of rockets was fired from Lebanon on Wednesday morning.

Initial reports say some rockets were intercepted while others fell inside Israel. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. 

At least 100 rockets were fired in the barrage within minutes, according to the Israeli military. 

The attack's range includes areas around 50 km from Lebanese territory.  

It marks one of the largest rocket attacks from Lebanon since cross-boundary hostilities began on 8 October.

מטח רקטות כבד לעבר הגליל העליון, עמק הירדן והגליל התחתון | תיעוד מהיירוטים@rubih67 @CBeyar pic.twitter.com/g4jgDEicb8

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) June 12, 2024

Nearly 3,000 Palestinian children in Gaza are at risk of death from malnutrition, Unicef said on Tuesday. 

The UN aid agency for children said it "stands ready to provide nutrition supplies, but safe humanitarian access and a ceasefire are needed NOW".

Nearly 3,000 children are at risk of death from malnutrition in Gaza.

Hospitals are destroyed, treatments have stopped and supplies are scant.

UNICEF stands ready to provide nutrition supplies, but safe humanitarian access and a ceasefire are needed NOW.https://t.co/TyHHo3xVXI

— UNICEF (@UNICEF) June 11, 2024

Sirens warning of incoming rockets are sounding across northern Israel, including in Tiberias, Safed and the lower Galilee. 

Dozens of rockets have been fired from Lebanon, according to initial reports. There were no immediate reports of impact. 

This comes after Israel killed Taleb Abdallah, a senior Hezbollah commander believe to be the highest-ranking member killed since fighting began in October. 

Hamas sources have told Haaretz the Palestinian group accepted the ceasefire outlines presented by President Joe Biden and included in the UN Security Council resolution earlier this week, the Israeli newspaper reported on Wednesday, 

Israel is the side that has yet to accept the proposal while the US is still "avoiding it," according to the sources. 

They add that Hamas informed mediators of their demands that should form the basis of the potential deal. 

"If there's a desire to move forward and ending the war, especially on the part of the United States, an agreement can be reached," they told Haaretz.