Live: Israel kills more than 430 Palestinians on Tuesday

A group of US Jewish activists have protested at Trump Tower in New York City, calling for the immediate release of Palestinian Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained for organising a pro-Palestine protest on campus.

Footage of the sit-in showed police forces escorting protesters out of the tower and arresting them.

“The abduction of Mahmoud Khalil by the Trump regime is further proof that we are on the brink of a full takeover by an authoritarian regime. As Jews of conscience, we know our history and we know where this leads,” Jane Hirschmann, an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace, said in a statement.

A three-year-old Palestinian child has been killed in an attack by an Israeli drone in the Shujaiya area in Gaza City, according to Wafa news agency.

The agency reports the infant was identified as Amjad Abad.

The International Criminal Court has recently focused on Israel’s war on Gaza, including issuing arrest warrants for crimes against humanity against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ex-defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar, each also the subject of an ICC warrant, were both killed by Israel, and confirmed dead by Hamas.

But the ICC does not only concern itself with the Middle East, and looks at allegations of crimes against humanity elsewhere.

In November 2024, the ICC's chief prosecutor Karim Khan sought a warrant for Myanmar’s acting president, Min Aung Hlaing, for his actions against the Rohingya population.

Read more: Israel's war on Gaza: What are crimes against humanity?

The house of a Palestinian behind a bombing attack in Tel Aviv last year will be demolished by the Israeli military.

Jafar Muna was killed in the attack, which injured one Israeli.

The Israeli army said it will confiscate and destroy Muna’s house, located in Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

An assistant undersecretary in Gaza’s health ministry said the enclave is in “urgent” need of 10 oxygen generators at least.

Medical equipment in hospitals has been destroyed by the Israeli troops, leaving thousands of patients “suffering in intensive care units and operation rooms due to the lack of access to oxygen supplies”, said Bassa al-Hamadine in a statement on Thursday.

Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar is set to visit the UK next week, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Multiple sources close to the British government confirmed Sa'ar is expected to make an official visit, likely next Thursday. MEE has approached the Foreign Office for comment.

The revelation comes shortly after Sa'ar attempted to justify Israel’s recent decision to cut off aid to Gaza, claiming without evidence that humanitarian assistance fuels Hamas.

"Aid that goes to Hamas is not humanitarian," Sa’ar said on 4 March, portraying the blockade as legitimate, despite it being considered an act of collective punishment under international law.

The British government has criticised the blockade, including Israel's decision to cut electricity from the Gaza Strip, warning it "risks breaching Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law".

Read more: Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar to visit the UK next week

Israel has committed “genocidal acts” through the systematic destruction of women’s healthcare facilities in Gaza, UN experts said in a major new report on Thursday.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, found that Israel’s systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, coupled with restricted medical supplies, resulted in a surge in maternal deaths, and is therefore tantamount to the crime of extermination.

Additionally, the report said that Israel’s direct targeting of women’s healthcare facilities has resulted in “irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group”. 

This, the commission concluded, amounts to two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.

They include deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births. 

Read more: UN inquiry concludes that Israel used 'systematic sexual violence' in Gaza

Israeli forces detained at least 25 Palestinians, including a woman and a number of former detainees, in the occupied West Bank during the last 24 hours, Wafa news agency reported. 

Meanwhile, 23 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank who had been working in the city of Tiberias, inside Israel, were rounded up by Israeli police under charges of residing there without permits.

Wafa reported that hundreds of Palestinian workers had been detained by Israeli police in recent weeks on the pretext that they did not have permits.

Egypt and Jordan have welcomed comments by US President Donald Trump that no one would expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

It's not yet clear if the remarks represent a change in Trump's proposal for the US to "take control" and "own" Gaza, which he announced in February.

At the time, he said that Gaza would be transformed into the "Riviera of the Middle East" and its Palestinian inhabitants would be removed forcibly to Jordan and Egypt - a proposal the two countries flatly rejected.

"Nobody will expel the Palestinians," Trump said Wednesday at the White House, in response to a reporter who asked if ​​"expelling the Palestinians from Gaza" had been discussed during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin.

Egypt's foreign ministry expressed "its appreciation for the statements of the American president... regarding the non-expulsion of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip". 

Jordan's foreign ministry said it "welcomed the remarks made by the American president on Wednesday", and stressed "the importance of achieving a just and lasting peace... in accordance with the two-state solution".

Trump's apparent reversal was "well received" in Gaza too, according to Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem.

Hussein al-Sheikh,  secretary-general of the PLO, said: "We appreciate the US president's statements confirming that the residents of the Gaza Strip are not required to leave their homeland."

Last week Arab states proposed an alternative to Trump's plan to forcibly expel Palestinians.

The proposal, led by Egypt, sets out a $53bn budget and a five-year timescale for the reconstruction of the Palestinian enclave, devastated by 15 months of Israel's war. It also outlines a vision for post-war governance in Gaza. 

It was adopted on Saturday by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and is being supported by a number of European countries, including the UK, France, Germany and Italy. 

An investment firm headed by Jared Kushner and backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates is the largest shareholder in an Israeli company which in turn holds shares in businesses accused by the United Nations of operating in illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Affinity Partners has received several billion dollars in funding from the Gulf states’ sovereign wealth funds since it was launched by Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son in law and former Middle East advisor, in 2021.

In January, just weeks after securing further funding from the Qatari Investment Authority (QIA) and an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm, Affinity completed the purchase of a near-10 percent stake in Phoenix Financial.

Phoenix, formerly known as Phoenix Holdings, is an Israeli financial services group that offers insurance and asset management services, and holds shares in other Israeli companies in its own name and through a subsidiary, Phoenix Investment House.

An investigation by Middle East Eye has established that these include 11 public companies and one private company currently named in a database of businesses with links to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, compiled by the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

READ MORE: Gulf states linked to Israeli businesses on UN settlements blacklist

Activists in London have placed ads in tubes and bus stops criticizing the Labour Party's deals with Israel.

"With Labour, Britain is doing deals with war criminals," the billboards read, showing Foreign Secretary David Lammy shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Spotted on the jubilee line pic.twitter.com/NHEFxMUdif

— Andrew Feinstein (@andrewfeinstein) March 12, 2025

Hamas on Thursday said a UN report accusing Israel of "genocidal acts" in Gaza showed that Israel had committed "genocide and humanitarian" violations in the Palestinian territory during the war.

"The UN's investigation report on Israel's genocidal acts against the Palestinian people confirms what has happened on the ground: genocide and violations of all humanitarian and legal standards," Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem told AFP.

"The atrocities committed by the occupation (Israel) are too horrific to be fully captured in this report, underscoring the urgent need to expedite the prosecution of its leaders for these crimes and ensure their swift trial at the International Criminal Court."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday condemned as "false and absurd" a UN investigation that found Israel had committed "genocidal acts" in the Gaza Strip.

"The anti-Israeli circus known as the UN Human Rights Council has long been exposed as an anti-Semitic, corrupt, terror-supporting, and irrelevant body," Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office.

Reporting by AFP

In the aftermath of Israel's war on Gaza, many commentators have asserted that the Middle East regional order is undergoing a profound change. 

Various developments are used to justify these arguments, including Israel’s claims of crushing of Hamas and Hezbollah; its occupation of new Lebanese and Syrian territory; Iran’s relative retreat from these arenas; and the fall of Assad in Syria, along with the accompanying improvement in Turkey’s position. 

The return of US President Donald Trump and a shift in Washington’s approach underscore these claims of a new order. But how much are these developments a serious departure for the region?

Several of these shifts are not without precedent, notably Israel’s recent advances. The scale of destruction and loss of life in Gaza and Lebanon is new, but the military tactics are not. 

Read more: Is this the dawn of a new era in the Middle East? Opinion by Christopher Phillips

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has confirmed that the country's air force carried out an air strike in the Syrian capital, Damascus, earlier today.

The minister also threatened Syria's interim leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, saying that he will find air force jets overhead striking targets whenever there's an activity against Israel organised "in Damascus or elsewhere".