Live: UK halts trade deal talks with Israel, summons ambassador over Gaza

A US federal judge on Friday ordered the release of Turkish Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who has spent six weeks in immigration detention in a remote part of Louisiana. 

"Her continued detention chills the speech of millions in this country who are not citizens," the judge said, citing the government's only evidence for arresting and detaining her, which was an opinion article she wrote criticising Israel's war on Gaza. 

“These are very substantial claims of both due-process and First Amendment violations," the judge added, according to court reporters in the room.

Ozturk testified via video link at the three-hour bail hearing on Friday, during which she suffered an asthma attack after complaining that she was locked up in poor and unsanitary conditions. 

Her arrest by plainclothes immigration agents stunned the world. Caught on a nearby security camera, it showed a group of people, all in masks, ambushing Ozturk on the street outside her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, northwest of Boston. They took her away in an unmarked car. 

Haaretz reported on Friday that the White House has been pressuring Israel to seal a ceasefire and captive-swap deal with Hamas - before US President Donald Trump heads out on his first working foreign trip to three Gulf countries next week. 

The visit is scheduled for 13-16 May. 

Washington reportedly threatened Israel with being "left alone" if it didn't act, Haaretz said, citing unnamed sources.

If a deal is indeed reached, it would presumably give Trump the optics of a win as he sits down with Arab leaders. 

“If Israel doesn’t come to its senses, the price of missing out will be higher than ever before,” Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, reportedly told families of Israeli captives in a meeting. 

A French pro-Palestinian protest group is contesting a government decision to shut it down, saying the move was politically motivated and based on "false" arguments as part of a wider crackdown on the movement for Palestinian rights.

Urgence Palestine (Emergency Palestine), created in 2023 to protest against Israel's military offensive in Gaza, filed its counterarguments to the shutdown procedure on Thursday, their lawyer Elsa Marcel said.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, explaining the decision, said in a letter dated 28 April to one of the group's founders, Omar Alsoumi, that Urgence Palestine had provoked violent acts, including towards Jewish people, and had called for armed struggle.

Asked about the decision, Alsoumi told Reuters on Friday: 

"This shows the partiality of the French government on the genocidal war that the Palestinian people is experiencing."

He said the group, which has been organising protests across France over the past 19 months, rejects any conflation of Jews and the Israeli government and that Palestinians have the right to resist occupation under international law.

- Reporting by Reuters 

The Israeli military on Friday said it had killed Nour Abdel Karim al-Bitawi, the commander of the Jenin battalion in the West Bank. 

Bitawi "maintained connections with Hamas in Gaza and abroad", the Israeli military said. 

He had been among the most wanted on Israeli intelligence lists. 

As Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew from the Bible to paint all Palestinians as enemies of the Jewish people.

"Remember what Amalek has done to you," he said, referring to an ancient people mentioned in the Bible that the people of Israel are commanded to fight and destroy.

Since then, ministers, MPs, journalists and other public figures have continued the campaign to dehumanise Palestinians. Even Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, has said there are no innocent people in Gaza, a common refrain legitimising the bombing and starvation meted out on the entire enclave.

On Tuesday, Tally Gotliv, an MP from Netanyahu’s Likud party, was interviewed by Israel’s Channel 7 about the fresh military operation in Gaza that is designed to occupy the whole enclave and force its population into a small compound in the south. 

Gotliv noted that the operation was already underway, as Gaza has been subjected to a two-month total siege. "Even before military action, it's starvation. After all, international law does not apply to terrorist organisations," Gotliv said.

Read more: How Israel’s dehumanisation of Palestinians stokes the slaughter in Gaza

Israeli forces besieged a home in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, targeting it with anti-tank missiles, Wafa news agency is reporting.

According to the report, the Israeli army encircled a house in the eastern part of the city and fired several anti-tank rounds at it, as well as blocking ambulances from reaching the area.

Wafa added that military reinforcements were deployed in the area.

One minute to midnight. This is the phrase that kept coming back to me after returning from the occupied Palestinian territories, as I tried to process the overwhelming persecution I had seen there. 

What midnight itself looks like - the moment the clock finally strikes - is too bleak to picture fully, though with the haunting horrors of Gaza now etched into the global conscience, many can likely imagine it all too vividly.

A week has passed since that visit. As expected, it stirred little interest in mainstream media circles. So it was something of a relief to see Louis Theroux’s powerful documentary on Israeli settlers ignite a spark of public conversation.

Theroux’s work has drawn criticism. Some say he misrepresented the settler community, even co-opting the term. 

I disagree. If anything, “settlers” is far too soft a word. It conjures an image of calm arrival, snowflakes falling gently, or weary travellers gathering around a fire. 

Read more: My message to the Palestinians: We have not forgotten you, but we have failed you: Opinion by Shockat Adam

Israeli forces say they successfully intercepted a ballistic missile launched by the Houthi group in Yemen.

The attack triggered sirens across central Israel.

No injuries or damage has been reported.

Israel's military said on Friday that it had identified the launch of a missile from Yemen towards Israel.

It added that sirens were activated in several areas in Israel following the projectile.

Reporting by Reuters

At least 27 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the last 24 hours, the enclave's health ministry is reporting.

The latest figures have pushed the overall toll of Palestinians killed in Israel's war on Gaza since October 2023 to 52,787, with another 119,349 injured.

The Israeli military’s former chief of staff has accused his successor of “sending soldiers to commit war crimes” in Gaza and torn into Israel’s government for “losing touch with Jewish morality”.

In an interview with Israeli outlet Ynet on Thursday, Moshe Yaalon, who also served as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defence minister between 2013 and 2016, said Israel had abandoned the captives held by Hamas and was carrying out a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza. 

Yaalon attacked the current military chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, saying he was not stopping “clearly illegal orders” and was ordering “his soldiers to be war criminals”.

“Call it ethnic cleansing, call it transfer, call it deportation - it’s a war crime,” Yaalon said, describing plans led by far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir to occupy the entire Gaza Strip and evacuate its Palestinian population.

“Smotrich and Ben Gvir do not want to replace Hamas; they want Israeli military rule and Israeli civilian administration. Let them say it very clearly: they are going to occupy Gaza and settle it with Jews after it has been ethnically cleansed. Let them say it,” said Yaalon, who fought in the 1973 Middle East war and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Read more: Israel 'sending soldiers to commit war crimes in Gaza', says former army chief

Germany's new chancellor Friedrich Merz reaffirmed that Israel’s security and existence remain part of the country's "reason of state,” during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a government spokesperson said on Friday.

“The chancellor strongly condemned Hamas's brutal terror attack of October 7 and expressed deep concern over the fate of hostages and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” spokesman, Stefan Kornelius said in a statemen.

Merz, who has long been a vocal supporter of Israel, criticised the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Netanyahu shortly after his election victory.

He told reporters that he would find "ways and means" to facilitate Netanyahu's potential visit to Berlin.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) has said it is "impossible" to replace the organisation in Gaza.

"It is impossible to replace Unrwa in a place like Gaza. We are the largest humanitarian organisation", said spokeswoman Juliette Touma at a press briefing from Amman in response to a question about US's announcement of a new foundation that would manage humanitarian aid in the enclave.

Touma said that in Gaza over 10,000 Unrwa staff are "working to deliver what remains of the supplies," as well as managing shelters for displaced family.

"It is very, very difficult to imagine any humanitarian operation without the Unrwa," she said.

Four Palestinians have been killed in separate Israeli attacks on Khan Younis and Gaza City, Wafa news agency is reporting.

According to the report, an Israeli drone strike at the Murtaja junction in eastern Khan Yunis killed three people, including a 60-year-old man and his 19-year-old son.

In Gaza City, a Palestinian succumbed to wounds sustained in an Israeli attack on Thursday which targeted a group of civilians near Al-Amal Hotel west of Gaza City.

Wafa reported that his father and uncle were also killed in the same attack.

On 8 and 9 May, a so-called "People's Peace Summit", titled "The Time Has Come", took place at Binyanei HaUma convention centre in Jerusalem.

Sixty Israeli organisations gathered under the banner of peace, claiming to prepare the ground for a political resolution to the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict". 

The summit featured tours, workshops, film screenings, performances, and - on the second day - keynote speeches promoting what organisers described as a "peace-based worldview".

According to its website, the summit aimed to promote "dialogue" between Palestinians and Israelis, in hopes of sparking societal change and inspiring belief that after each war, a political process would follow.

"The time has come," the organisers declared. "Now, when it burns and hurts, after long years of fear and violence, of struggle, of occupation and terror. The war that erupted on 7 October must and can be the last war - the one after which peace will come."

Read more: Why the Israeli left's 'peace summit' is in denial about the Gaza genocide Opinion by Abed Abou Shhadeh