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

Health officials in Gaza said on Thursday that the European hospital in Khan Younis is now entirely out of service after heavy Israeli bombardment earlier in the week.

"The hospital includes 28 intensive care beds, 12 nurseries, 260 overnight beds, 25 emergency beds, and 60 oncology beds that are now out of service," the health ministry said in a statement.

"The European Gaza Hospital is the only hospital providing medical follow-up care for cancer patients in the Gaza Strip, following the destruction of the Turkish Friendship Hospital," it added. 

Other specialised services such as neurosurgery, thoracic surgery, the cardiac catheterisation centre, cardiovascular surgery, and ophthalmology have now all stopped, as they were only available at the European Hospital, officials noted. 

The Cannes film community mourned Palestinian journalist Fatima Hassouna on Thursday evening, cramming into theatres to watch the documentary about her life in Gaza. 

She used to say this would pass, recalled director Sepideh Farsi ahead of a showing of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk in the French Riviera resort town.

"And it will pass. She is not here, but yet she is present, they didn't manage to defeat her," Farsi said, her voice breaking. 

Hassouna, 25, had been determined to come to the Cannes Film Festival to see the documentary despite the difficulties posed by Israel's blockade, Farsi told Reuters ahead of the screenings. 

She was "glowing with joy" the day she learned the film had been selected, Farsi added. 

The next day, Hassouna was killed in an Israeli air strike on her home.

Her death prompted the usually apolitical festival to issue a statement mourning her as one of "the far too many victims of the violence" in the region.

- Reporting by Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's latest offer to Hamas only demanded that the group hand over 10 Israeli captives from Gaza, Hamas representative Taher al-Nono said in a statement on Thursday.

"Netanyahu says he wants only 10 captives, which means he does not care about the captives issue and is insisting on war," Nono said.

"Any exchange [of captives] must be comprehensive and ensure an end to the war. We will not return to the interim period," he added. 

Hamas has also already informed Egyptian mediators that it will "hand over the administration of Gaza" to an agreed-upon committee, Nono said.

"The occupation has not offered anything new and is rejecting any proposals from the mediators regarding a ceasefire."

Yemen's Houthi armed forces on Thursday declared the hypersonic ballistic missile fired at - and intercepted by - Israel a few hours earlier a success, given Israelis had to "flee to shelters and [halt] airport operations for an hour".

The group, which has been the de facto government in Yemen for a decade, also said it would "expand its military operations" against Israel, given the increased scale of suffering in Gaza.

Attacks against Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv will continue, as will the disruption to Israel-linked vessels crossing the Bab-el-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea, the Houthis said in a statement. 

The UK government approved $169m worth of military equipment to Israel in the three months that followed the Labour government’s partial suspension of arms exports over concerns they could be used unlawfully in Gaza. 

Export data released on Thursday shows that 20 different licences in categories such as military aircraft, radars, targeting equipment, and explosive devices, were approved between October and December 2024.

Read more: Arms campaigners say this is more than what was approved altogether under the Tory government

For the second day in a row, the Israeli army said its aerial defence system intercepted a missile on Thursday that it says was fired by the Houthis in Yemen. 

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Antalya, Turkey, on Thursday that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that he expressed to him that Washington is troubled by the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Rubio said the US was "not insensitive to the suffering" of people in Gaza.

Israel's United Nations ambassador, Danny Danon, said on Thursday that his state will not fund the US-formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but will facilitate and enable it.

The move bypasses the decades-long UN infrastructure in place to receive and distribute aid across Gaza. 

UN officials have slammed the US and Israeli decision, and on Thursday, the UN's deputy spokesperson said the international body will not participate in the new initiative. 

A statement from Hamas on Thursday has praised US President Donald Trump's vision for peace in the region, and urged him to use his influence to stop Israel's renewed war on Gaza.

"Hamas has conveyed through all its communications, including with the US administration, its willingness to engage constructively with all international stakeholders to achieve this goal: An immediate cessation of the war and the launch of a credible political process that leads to the establishment of a fully independent Palestinian state," Basem Naim, a member of Hamas's political bureau, said.

"President Trump possesses the necessary influence and authority to make this a reality, should the political will exist," he added.

"Trump continues to reiterate his vision for global de-escalation and the creation of a safer, more peaceful world. His efforts are near to bring results in Ukraine, Iran and already brought results in India and Pakistan," Naim said.

"We affirm that such a vision, while commendable in principle, can not be realised as long as the war and genocide in Gaza persists."

My grandfather, Ismail Abou Shhadeh - known to most as Abu Subhi - never spoke to us about the Nakba. He talked about everything else but had always avoided describing what happened in 1948.

It was only through interviews he gave to various media outlets that we came to understand what it meant to live through the catastrophe of 1948 in what was then one of Palestine's most prominent cities, Jaffa (Yafa in Arabic).

And it was only through one interview in particular, with Al Jazeera, that we learned how his father, Haseen Abou Shhadeh, died.

Haseen was born during the Ottoman era, when land was often seen as belonging to those who worked it - a principle that had shaped generations of Palestinian agricultural life, even as formal land ownership laws changed.

In 1948, Zionist militias exploited that deep sense of rootedness and security, catching unsuspecting Palestinian villagers off guard and using terror to drive them from their homes and seize their land and property. 

Read more: The Nakba: Jaffa’s erasure is a warning to Gaza - but history is yet to be written by Abed Abou Shhadeh

A heavily pregnant Israeli settler was killed in a shooting in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, drawing calls from pro-settler leaders for nearby Palestinian villages to be flattened.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting near the Brukhin settlement in the northern West Bank.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Tzeela Gez was shot while in a car with her husband as they were driving to the hospital to give birth.

Israeli media reported that Gez was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital, where her baby was delivered by caesarean section. The baby is reportedly in a serious but stable condition, while Gez's husband Hananel was lightly injured.

Israeli politicians said the nearby Palestinian towns of Bruqin and az-Zawiya should be destroyed like cities in Gaza, amid one of the largest Israeli military assaults in the West Bank in two decades. At least 38,000 people have been displaced since the assault was launched in January.

Israeli military and settlers have killed at least 934 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of Israel's war on Gaza, according to health ministry figures.

Five Palestinians were killed on Thursday during an Israeli army operation in Tamoun in the northern occupied West Bank, the village mayor and the army said.

"Israeli occupation forces killed five young men after besieging a house in the center of the village," said mayor Samir Qteichat.

"The occupation army took away four bodies, and we found a fifth martyr, his body charred, after the occupation forces left," he added.

The Israeli army confirmed that it had targeted two buildings in the villages of Tamoun and Tubas.

For months parliamentarians have questioned the British government about the role of a Royal Air Force military airbase on the island of Cyprus, just a 40 minute flight away from Tel Aviv.

From there, RAF shadow aircraft have conducted regular surveillance flights over Gaza throughout Israel's war on the besieged enclave.

In response to questions about these flights, the Ministry of Defence has insisted they are in support of "hostage rescue".

Over the past few months, MPs have asked the armed forces minister, Luke Pollard, several questions about the airbase on the former British colony. They were all answered.

Until this week when Labour MP Kim Johnson tabled a question on Israel's use of the airbase.

Read more: UK blocks Labour MP from asking about Israeli bombers using British airbase

Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 103 people, the majority of them children and women, on Thursday, rescuers said.

According to an earlier report on Wafa, the death toll from Israel's war on Gaza has risen to 52,928 Palestinians, with almost 119,846 reported wounded since 7 October 2023.

Israel carried out the latest strikes on the day Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or "catastrophe" in English, when around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes by Zionist militias to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948.

With most of the 2.3 million people in Gaza internally displaced, some residents of the tiny enclave say suffering is greater now than at the time of the Nakba.

"What we are experiencing now is even worse than the Nakba of 1948," said Ahmed Hamad, a Palestinian in Gaza City who has been displaced multiple times.

Jordanian authorities have blocked access to Middle East Eye's website, days after it published an investigation alleging that the Hashemite Kingdom had charged exorbitant fees while overseeing the delivery of international aid into Gaza.

In the article, sources from several international aid organisations told MEE that NGOs were having to pay $2,200 for every aid truck entering Gaza and that Jordanian authorities were charging between $200,000 and $400,000 per airdrop over Gaza.

According to the sources, around $200,000 was charged for each random drop, and $400,000 for targeted missions, despite each aircraft carrying the equivalent of less than half a truckload of aid.

A day after the report was published, the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO), the official body that acts as the sole conduit for aid passing through the country, said it strongly rejected MEE's reporting.

The JHCO media office said the costs of the airdrops were, in fact, slightly higher than those stated in MEE’s report, with untargeted airdrops costing $210,000 each and GPS-guided airdrops reaching “up to $450,000”.

Read more: Jordan blocks access to Middle East Eye after investigation on Gaza aid drops