Live: UK halts trade deal talks with Israel, summons ambassador over Gaza
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Israel has bombed the vicinity of the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis, multiple news outlets are reporting on Tuesday.
Several people are dead, health officials said, with many buried in the earth from the impact of the blast, images on social media show.
Israel said it targeted a Hamas "command centre" beneath the hospital. It did not produce any evidence to that effect.
The British government assessed last year that there was “no serious risk” of a genocide occurring in Gaza, weeks before it imposed a partial suspension of arms exports to Israel which did not include parts that could end up in Israeli F-35 fighter jets.
Before that decision was taken, a handling plan set out that newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer would call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to let him know the suspensions were coming.
These details are laid bare in the government’s argument filed in the judicial review of the UK’s decision to continue exporting F35 parts to Israel.
The case opened at the High Court on Tuesday, 19 months after Palestinian rights group Al Haq and the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (Glan) first made their challenge. In the intervening months, the then-newly elected Labour government announced a partial suspension of around 30 arms export licences in September.
The government, however, continued to allow the export of F-35 parts to a global pool which could eventually end up in Israel jets, citing the risk to global peace and security if they stopped.
Report by Dania Akkad in London.
Read more: UK assessed there was 'no serious risk' of Israel committing genocide in Gaza
Rights groups and charities gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday to support a legal challenge against the UK government's continuing export of F-35 fighter jet parts for use by Israel.
Groups present at the protest included Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, which bought forward the current case with the support of the Global Action Legal Network (GLAN), Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam.
Zarah Sultana, a suspended Labour MP, joined the protest alongside independent MPs Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, and Imran Hussain.Sultana told Middle East Eye that British arms exports to Israel made the UK "complicit in genocide" in Gaza.
"Every F-35, which is described as the most lethal fighter by its own manufacturer, is dropping 2,000-pound bombs on people in Gaza and decimating whole neighbourhoods and universities," Sultana said.
"And with 15 percent of every F-35 made here in the UK, it makes us complicit in the live-streamed genocide unfolding in Gaza."
Reporting by Areeb Ullah in London.
Read more here: Rights groups call on UK to end all arms sales to Israel as court case begins
“No need, Razan, for you to go to China - come to Huwara, China is here.” Though said jokingly by my friend Ahmad, who asked his full name be withheld for security reasons, these words carried a heavy truth.
Huwara is a small Palestinian village near Nablus, surrounded by some of the most violent and ideologically extreme Zionist settlements in the country, including Yitzhar.
When I asked what he meant, he told me: “Chinese workers are living and working in nearby settlements. I see them regularly in the village streets, shopping at local Palestinian stores.”
That offhand remark a couple of months ago pushed me to investigate further. I spoke with Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and collected their testimonies. Ali, who lives in Ramallah near the Beit El settlement, told me: “I’ve seen dozens of Chinese workers building homes and infrastructure in Beit El.”
Read more: How China is quietly aiding Israel's settlement enterprise
Away from Beijing's lofty rhetoric about defending Palestinians, Chinese firms are helping to sustain illegal settlements, writes Razan Shawamreh in her latest column
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army is planning to enter Gaza "with full force" in the coming days, according to a statement from his office on Tuesday.
"In the very coming days, we are going in with full force to complete the operation. Completing the operation means defeating Hamas. It means destroying Hamas," he said. "There will be no situation where we stop the war. A temporary ceasefire might happen, but we are going all the way."
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said his government is "working" to find countries that will receive Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
"We've set up an administration that will allow them [Gaza residents] to leave but... we need countries willing to take them in," a statement by his office said.
"That's what we're working on right now," the statement quoted Netanyahu as saying during a meeting with wounded soldiers in his office on Monday.
Netanyahu estimated that "over 50 percent will leave" if given the option, the statement added.
United States special envoy Adam Boehler said on Tuesday there was a better chance now to secure the release of the remaining 58 captives held in Gaza following the release of Israeli-American captive Edan Alexander by Hamas on Monday.
Boehler was speaking to reporters in Tel Aviv.
The death toll in Gaza has reached 52,908, the enclave’s health ministry said in a statement on Telegram. Israeli attacks have wounded at least 119,721 people in addition to the deaths.
The ministry said, at least 46 people were killed and 73 injured in the past 24 hours alone.
Since 18 March, when Israel resumed bombardments following a brief ceasefire, at least 2,780 people have been killed and 7,680 wounded.
Israel has released at least nine Palestinian detainees from Gaza, taken shortly after the 7 October Hamas attack, Al Jazeera reported.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed facilitating the release of nine whose ages range between 30 and 60.
The detainees are receiving medical evaluations and support at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, according to the ICRC.
Another 11 Palestinians were released from Israeli detention four days ago.
Malnutrition rates are rising in Gaza amid the Israeli blockade, and hunger could have lasting impacts on "an entire generation", the World Health Organisation's representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory said on Tuesday.
Rik Peeperkorn said he had seen children in clinics who looked years younger than their age.
"Without enough nutritious food, clean water and access to healthcare, an entire generation will be permanently affected," Peeperkorn told a press briefing by video link from Deir al-Balah, warning of poor health, stunting and impaired cognitive development.
Hamas rejected on Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that military pressure had helped secure the release of US-Israeli captive Edan Alexander from Gaza a day earlier.
"The return of Edan Alexander is the result of serious communications with the US administration and the efforts of mediators, not a consequence of Israeli aggression or the illusion of military pressure," Hamas said in a statement, adding that "Netanyahu is misleading his people."
Ancient buildings are the keepers of secrets: the ghosts and stories of the people who have gone before rest within their walls.
Despite attempts to conceal the past, remnants stubbornly remain, as anyone who has renovated can attest - faded posters, peeling wallpaper, chipped paint - such immutable objects can bear witness to a forgotten time.
In this meditative travelogue, Raja Shehadeh and his wife Penny Johnson, both in their eighth decade, contemplate the hidden history and geography of historic Palestine, now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
This is a place where even “archaeology is politicised”.
The couple’s quest is to reveal the lost, neglected and intentionally erased stories that criss-cross and sustain the land.
Read more: Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials
More than 380 figures from the cinema world including Schindler's List actor Ralph Fiennes condemned "genocide" in Gaza in an open letter published on Tuesday ahead of the Cannes Festival opening.
"We cannot remain silent while genocide is taking place in Gaza," read the letter initiated by several pro-Palestinian activist groups and published in French newspaper Liberation and US magazine Variety.
The signatories - which include Hollywood stars Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon, as well as acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and former Cannes winner Ruben Ostlund - decried Israel's killing of Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna in Gaza.
Hassouna, 25, is the subject of a documentary which will premiere in Cannes on Thursday by Iranian director Sepideh Farsi, titled Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.
Hassouna was killed along with 10 relatives in an Israeli air strike on her family home in northern Gaza last month, the day after the documentary was announced as part of the ACID Cannes selection.
Other signatories include Jonathan Glazer, the British director of Jewish origin, who won an Oscar for his 2023 Auschwitz drama The Zone of Interest, as well as US star Mark Ruffalo and Spanish actor Javier Bardem.
An Israeli drone strike killed Palestinian journalist Hassan Islayeh while he was receiving treatment in the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Tuesday.
Islayeh, a prominent field reporter and director of the Alam24 news agency, had been recovering from injuries sustained in a previous Israeli air strike last month that targeted a media tent near the same hospital.
That attack killed two journalists and wounded several others.
The earlier strike appeared to target Islayeh directly, hitting his mobile phone, but he survived the incident.
Local media described Tuesday’s attack as a “deliberate assassination,” noting that he was struck again while being treated in the hospital’s burns unit.
Read more: Israeli strike kills Palestinian journalist receiving treatment in Gaza hospital
Israeli forces are carrying out a large-scale arrest campaign in the town of Dura, south of the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, according to Al Jazeera.
In the northern part of the territory, soldiers have also reportedly begun raiding the Askar al-Jadeed refugee camp in Nablus, storming homes and defacing property.
Wafa reported that Israeli forces stormed the city from the Awarta checkpoint and surrounded a house inside Askar al-Jadid camp in the east of Nablus.
The military also began levelling about half a hectare of Palestinian land in the village of Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, Wafa said.
