Live: Lawyers present genocide risk case against Israel at ICJ

Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Mossad director David Barnea will hold a meeting with US envoy Steve Witkoff in Paris on Friday, according to Axios reporter Barak Ravid.

Ravid, who posted the news on X, has cited three Israeli anonymous sources.

The meeting comes ahead of US-Iran nuclear talks that are scheduled for this weekend in Rome.

Israeli troops have arrested at least three Palestinians in Tulkarem, amid a wave of raids and arrests in the occupied West Bank.

According to Wafa, Israeli forces raided many shops and set off sound bombs and stun grenades.

In the early hours of Friday, Israeli forces also stormed several homes and arrested two young men in Nablus, according to the Wafa news agency.

An Israeli army drone has detonated a vehicle on a highway in the area of Ghaziyeh, located in the Lebanese southern city of Sidon.

Rescue teams are shown in footage while trying to control the fire that has engulfed the car.

The US will begin to vet all social media accounts of any US visa applicant, who has been to Gaza on or after 1 January 2007, according to an internal State Department cable shown to Reuters.

The order will include applications put forward by non-governmental organisation workers as well as individuals, who were present in Gaza for any period of time, whether it was for an official or a diplomatic duty.

"If the review of social media results uncovers potential derogatory information relating to security issues, then a SAO must be submitted," the cable said.

This means a visa application would be submitted for an investigation to assess whether the applicant could pose a national security risk to the US.

The cable was dated on 17 April and signed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In March, Rubio said that he may have revoked more than 300 visas already.

The move follows the visa revocation of hundreds of people in the US, including many who held legal permanent residents, under a 1952 law  which allows the deportation of immigrants whose presence deems harmful to US foreign policy.

The Israeli army has carried out raids across the occupied West Bank on Friday.

According to al-Jazeera, two Palestinians were arrested in the mountain areas north of Nablus, where clashes have broken out between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters in the town of Abwein, near Ramallah.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said on Friday that no ceasefire deal will be reached with Hamas and no humanitarian aid will be allowed into Gaza until the Palestinian group is defeated.

He posted on X saying that “Hamas will not set conditions”

“No deal, no ceasefire, no aid – just continued fighting until [Hamas] are defeated in Gaza,” he wrote.

The far-right minister has also called for adding “pressure” on Hamas  to capitulate while aid agencies warn that Palestinians are surviving on a critical rate due to the weeks long Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid into the Strip.

Ben Gvir said: “Exert all the power and might – until Hamas begs on its knees. Until complete victory”.  

On Wednesday, Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz described the blockade as a “main pressure lever” against Hamas to surrender.

Good morning Middle East Eye readers,

Here are some of the latest updates from Israel's war on Gaza:

• At least 13 people from the same family have been killed in an Israeli shelling on their house in the town of Beni Suheila, located east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, in the early hours of Friday.
• The Israeli army said its defence system has intercepted a missile which was launched from Yemen towards Israeli territory.
• Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, saying that more work needs to be done with international partners to exert “maximum pressure” to end Israel’s long blockade on humanitarian aid.
• The death toll for the US military attack on Ras Isa’s port in Yemen’s Hodeida government has climbed to 38, with 102 wounded.
• The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that food supplies in Gaza are running critically low, and that it may not be able to assist the more than one million people it has helped over the past months.
• Faculty members at Harvard University are staging a protest against US President Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw funds and tax-exempt status from the institution if it does not meet the demands to provide information on foreign students enrolled there.

Our live coverage from Gaza will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are some of the day's key developments:

• Israeli air raids have killed at least 32 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip since dawn, medical sources told Al Jazeera on Thursday.

• The head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Khalil al-Hayya, has said in a statement on Thursday that the group is prepared to begin negotiations on a “comprehensive package” to end the war, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of torpedoing a previous agreement.

• At least 40 Palestinians have been killed and 73 others injured in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours as a result of ongoing Israeli attacks, according to medical sources.

• Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said Thursday that Israel had failed to respect January's ceasefire agreement in Gaza, as he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

• About 200 French journalists staged a die-in in Paris and Marseille on Wednesday evening to protest against Israel’s killing of Palestinian journalists and show solidarity with their colleagues in Gaza.

• UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has informed Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar that a legal request seeking his arrest was dismissed by the British Attorney General’s Office.

• Harvard University will lose its ability to enrol foreign students if it does not meet the Trump administration's demands to provide information on some visa holders, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has warned.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it is “outraged” after an explosion damaged one of its facilities in Gaza on Wednesday—marking the second such incident in under a month.

“This is the second such incident in three weeks,” the organisation posted on X, noting that another location was previously hit by an Israeli tank shell on 24 March.

The ICRC did not reveal the specific sites but stressed that the buildings were “clearly marked and regularly notified to all parties.”

“We condemn in the strongest terms any action that inhibits our ability to do our work and risks the lives of humanitarian workers,” the statement read.

In theory, the role of the media is to tell the truth and hold power to account. British newspapers and broadcasters have not fulfilled this function when it comes to Israel and the Gaza war.

On the contrary, British journalists have repeated the lies promoted by Israeli and British politicians. Some have produced fresh lies of their own, effectively acting as the propaganda arm of the Israeli state. 

The latest case in point concerns this week’s visit of Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar with his British counterpart, David Lammy. There’s no question this was major news. 

Saar was meeting the British foreign secretary just days after Israeli authorities detained and deported two Labour MPs - a month after Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas, opening the way to a fresh round of atrocities; and almost two months into Israel’s latest illegal blockade of Gaza. 

All this amid growing speculation that Israel is pressing for a new war on Iran.

Read more: Why did UK media ignore Lammy's secret meeting with Israeli foreign minister?

A large fire has engulfed Ras Isa port in Yemen’s Hodeidah province, after a US strike hit the area earlier today.

Footage shared by Yemeni activists and verified by Al Jazeera shows flames ripping through parts of the port, sending thick smoke into the sky.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed the attack, saying it had struck a facility used to store and distribute fuel for Houthi forces. The US claims could not be independently verified.

Ras Isa is one of Yemen’s critical oil terminals, and the strike raises fresh concerns over the worsening humanitarian situation in the war-torn country.

In theory, the role of the media is to tell the truth and hold power to account. British newspapers and broadcasters have not fulfilled this function when it comes to Israel and the Gaza war.

On the contrary, British journalists have repeated the lies promoted by Israeli and British politicians. Some have produced fresh lies of their own, effectively acting as the propaganda arm of the Israeli state. 

The latest case in point concerns this week’s visit of Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar with his British counterpart, David Lammy. There’s no question this was major news. 

Saar was meeting the British foreign secretary just days after Israeli authorities detained and deported two Labour MPs - a month after Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas, opening the way to a fresh round of atrocities; and almost two months into Israel’s latest illegal blockade of Gaza. 

All this amid growing speculation that Israel is pressing for a new war on Iran.

Read more: Why did UK media ignore Lammy's secret meeting with Israeli foreign minister?

The United States is in the process of pulling out troops from northeastern Syria, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

According to the paper, Washington is closing three of its eight military outposts in the region and reducing troop levels from approximately 2,000 to around 1,400.

The move, the report adds, is based on information from two senior American officials familiar with the withdrawal.

For years, US officials had said that 900 troops were in Syria to support the fight against the Islamic State group.

Then, in February, it said there were 2,000 troops in Syria. Now, following the withdrawal, it says it will leave behind up to 1,400 troops.

US reports that its withdrawing troops from Syria could not be independently verified, and the true number of soldiers in the country is unknown.

The drawdown comes amid growing scrutiny over the US’s long-standing military presence in Syria.

US warplanes have carried out a new round of air raids on Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen on Thursday, according to media linked to the Ansar Allah movement.

The reports say American forces launched two strikes on the Al-Sama region in Arhab, located within the Sanaa governorate.

Four additional raids reportedly targeted the Ras Issa area in Yemen’s western Hodeidah province, a strategic coastal zone that has seen repeated US attacks in recent months.

A Tufts University graduate student who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last month in Somerville, Massachusetts, was denied bail by an immigration court in the state of Louisiana.

According to a petition filed on Wednesday in Vermont by her legal team, the immigration denied bail based on the “untenable conclusion” that Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk was “both a flight risk and a danger to the community”.

In the submission, Ozturk’s legal team urged the federal US District judge in Vermont to order that 30-year-old Ozturk be released or at least returned to Vermont by 18 April, following the immigration court ruling.

Ozturk, a former Fulbright scholar, was pursuing her PhD in child and human development at Tufts before the Trump administration targeted her for deportation for co-authoring an opinion article in the Tufts Daily student newspaper.

Ozturk was detained by masked plainclothes ICE agents on the street in Somerville on 25 March before being taken to an ICE detention centre in Basile, Louisiana. 

Read more: US immigration judge denies bail to detained Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk