Israel-Palestine live: US and Israel air differences over Gaza strategy
Live Updates
One of the three Palestinian students shot last week in the US state of Vermont is paralysed from the chest down and may not be able to walk again.
In a GoFundMe page created on Saturday to raise money for Hisham Awartani’s medical expenses, his family and friends shared that “one of the bullets that struck him is lodged in his spine and has left him paralyzed from the chest down”.
“The family is committed to his recovery and remain hopeful, in spite of the grave prognosis,” Awartani’s family said on the GoFundMe page.
Elizabeth Price, Awartani's mother, told NBC News that the injury was an "incomplete spinal injury, which means that he can feel, but he can’t move the areas that are currently paralyzed”.
Price said that he would be going into intensive rehabilitation, in the hope that it would help with his prognosis.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai Alkalia called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem, as the Palestinian death toll since the Israeli onslaught began on 7 October reached 16,160.
In a press conference in Ramallah on Tuesday, Alkalia also called for international pressure on Israel to allow medical teams, aid trucks and medical supplies to enter the besieged Gaza Strip.
“We call on the United Nations, international and human rights organisations to immediately implement international humanitarian laws that prohibit attacks on hospitals, health centres, ambulances, health teams and paramedics,” she said, and to “urgently allow sufficient humanitarian and health supplies to enter the Gaza Strip, especially medicines, medical supplies, food, dairy, and fuel for generators in hospitals.”
Legal and human rights groups challenging the British government in the High Court say the UK has breached its legal obligations by continuing to license arms sales to Israel as it continues its offensive on Gaza.
In a case filed on Wednesday, Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq and the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) reported mounting evidence of Israeli violations of international law in its current assault on Gaza, which has killed nearly 15,900 people.
Read more: Groups take UK government to court over arms exports to Israel
Phillippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, confirmed on social media platform X that 130 of the agency's employees had been killed amid the ongoing Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
"No one is spared, a devastating and endless human tragedy," he said.
A senior Israeli commander reported that Israeli forces were engaged in the "most intense" day of fighting since the start of the ground invasion of Gaza.
"We are in the most intense day since the beginning of the ground operation," the Israeli army's General Yaron Finkelman said on Tuesday.
The announcement came as Israeli forces posted on X that they were operating in the Jabalia refugee camp, the Shujayea district, and "starting tonight also in the centre of Khan Younis".
The State Department is expected to accounce on Tuesday that it will impose travel bans on Israeli settlers involved in attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, the US newssite, Axios reported, citing to US officials.
The officials added that they would not disclose the names of the banned individuals.
The news comes after US President Biden raised concerns in a Washington Post op-ed about escalating attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, and said that the US was preparing to impose travel bans on those involved.
According to the officials, this is the first time the US has sanctioned extremist settlers since the Clinton administration.
At least three Palestinians have been wounded following an Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
Around 40 Israeli army vehicles entered the city and its refugee camp on Tuesday, according to Wafa news agency. Among the three wounded was a woman who was said to be in critical condition, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Wafa reported that a Palestinian was shot in the leg by Israeli forces at point-blank range near Hebron.
Israel is considering a plan to flood a network of tunnels used by Hamas in the Gaza Strip with seawater, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, citing a US official.
In November, Israel reportedly finished assembling at least five large seawater pumps a mile north of northern Gaza's al-Shati refugee camp.
The pumps can draw water from the Mediterranean Sea and move thousands of cubic metres per hour, giving it the ability to flood the tunnel network within weeks, the report stated.
A US official told the Wall Street Journal that Israel had informed Washington of the plans last month, to which the reaction was "mixed".
Officials said that Washington weighed the feasibility of flooding the tunnels, the environmental impact, and the military value of disabling the network.
Read more: Israel considers 'flooding Gaza tunnels' with seawater
A Lebanese soldier has been killed and three others wounded from Israeli shelling near a village in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel, the Lebanese army said in a statement on Tuesday.
A man was slightly wounded by shrapnel from rockets fired from Gaza into Tel Aviv, according to Israeli medics.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said on Tuesday that it treated a man in his 40s. Fifteen rockets were fired from Gaza towards Tel Aviv, according to Israel's Ynet news website.
Earlier, two women in their 60s sustained light wounds after rockets were fired at a building in Ashkelon, in southern Israel.
As a child, Abeer Butmeh planted her first olive tree in her family's grove near Bethlehem.
But like so many Palestinians living in Battir village in the occupied West Bank, she remembers with painful clarity the day when that very same tree was uprooted by Israeli soldiers.
For Butmeh and other Palestinian environmentalists like her, attending the UN climate summit known as Cop28, which is taking place in Dubai this week, would be "illogical", given everything that is happening in Gaza.
"How can we call for environmental justice when the world is silent regarding what is happening?" she said.
"They will promote themselves as professional companies in recycling, in clean energy, and water management, and sustainable agriculture and green building. But for the reality… come and see what is happening in Palestine."
Read more: For Palestinian environmentalists, attending Cop28 is 'illogical'
Video footage shared online shows the aftermath of Israeli bombs targeting the multi-storey home of the Abu Misbah family in Gaza’s Deir al-Balah on Tuesday.
Dozens of people in the home were killed and many others wounded.
Graphic: Some viewers may find this footage disturbing.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said on Tuesday that two women in their 60s sustained light wounds from shrapnel from rockets.
The rocket hit a building in Ashkelon, with three others saying they experienced “acute anxiety attacks” as a result of the rocket fire, according to Israeli media.
Members of Israel’s war cabinet met with families of captives held in Gaza on Tuesday, a meeting that was postponed three times before, according to Israeli media.
