Israel's War on Gaza Live: Israel pounds Rafah in overnight strikes

Around 50 activists were arrested after a large crowd with the group Christians for a Free Palestine protested in the US Senate cafeteria on Tuesday.

“Congress and their staff will not eat today”, they chanted, “until Gaza eats”.

“I want to loudly proclaim that my Christian faith calls me to challenge Christian Zionism and stand in solidarity with Palestine,” reverent Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a national leader with Christians for a Free Palestine, said in a news release.

Iran’s top diplomat is set to travel to the US to participate in a UN Security Council session on Palestine next week, a trip that is likely to highlight the simmering tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian will attend the UN Security Council meeting on Palestine scheduled for 18 April.

His trip comes with tensions at a boilerplate, following a strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria, which Tehran said Israel conducted with US weapons and approval.

On Tuesday, Amir-Abdollahian repeated the accusation that the US approved the deadly strike that killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members, including two generals.

"America is responsible for this incident and must be held accountable," Abdollahian told reporters in Damascus.

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Palestinian news outlets are reporting that a dozen Palestinians have been killed after Israel bombed a residence in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

MEE couldn't independently verify the figure.

The White House said that an in-person meeting between Israeli and US officials on Israel's planned military invasion of Rafah will take place in a couple of weeks.

Reporting by Reuters

The tragic deaths of western aid workers in Gaza, who were killed by an Israeli air strike, has been met with outrage by western countries, with US lawmakers calling for a halt on arms sales to Israel.

But that was not the response when it came to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.

MEE looks at the West's double standards when it comes to war and conflict. Check out the video below.

US Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights Uzra Zeya was confronted during a talk she gave at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.

Students and alumni asked Zeya: "Do you support an end to the genocide?"

"Palestinian lives, generations gone because of your administration. Shame," said one student.

Rights groups, legal experts and several countries have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, and a case at the International Court of Justice on the matter is ongoing. Israel denies that it is doing so and says its war in Gaza is self-defence.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has told his American counterpart Lloyd Austin that there is no set date for an Israeli invasion of Rafah, according to Axios reporter Barak Ravid.

The report comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that there was a date set for the invasion, while the US responded saying it had not received any such date.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Washington does not have a date for a potential Israeli military invasion of Rafah, and added he is expecting to meet with Israeli colleagues next week to discuss Gaza.

Blinken was speaking to reporters after a meeting with British Foreign Minister David Cameron at the State Department.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a Senate hearing that Washington doesn't have evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

“We don’t have evidence of that,” Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The comments came after a group of pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted the hearing, accusing Austin of greenlighting genocide in the besieged enclave.

Israel is currently facing a case at the International Court of Justice, where South Africa has accused them of committing genocide.

The US is also facing an ongoing lawsuit in California, where a group of Palestinians are accusing the American government of complicity in an unfolding genocide in Gaza.

US Senator Bernie Sanders released a statement about Israel's decision to allow more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.

"These are welcome if long-overdue steps. But, given Israel’s horrendous humanitarian record thus far, these commitments must be closely monitored on a daily basis," Sanders said.

The US senator added that despite these steps, the humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel's war in Gaza has gone too far.

"A significant majority of the American people now believe that Israel should not receive additional US military aid while this horrific humanitarian crisis endures. I agree," he said.

"The United States cannot be complicit in the use of starvation as a weapon of war."

In a statement released by Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group said it targeted a group of Israeli soldiers on Tuesday.

Tensions in both Lebanon and Syria have been high since last week's air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which killed seven people including senior Iranian military officers.

Palestinian families have won a legal case against the Home Office when an immigration tribunal found that the government department’s refusal to consider their reunion applications was "irrational and unreasonable", and breached the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Judges ruled on Thursday in favour of two Palestinian families who brought charges against the Home Office in February after it refused requests to decide on visa applications before enrolling biometric data.  

Existing visa guidelines require applicants to enrol biometric information at a Visa Application Centre (VAC) before submitting a visa application. As Gaza’s VAC is closed, the nearest is in Cairo, which is impossible for many Palestinians in Gaza to reach.

The families demonstrated that having a positive "in principle" decision would have assisted them in negotiating exit via Rafah and travelling to a VAC in Egypt, via the assistance of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the Egyptian authorities or via bribes paid to Egyptian state-linked agencies that historically faciliated exits from Gaza. 

Read more: Gaza families win legal challenge against UK refusal for family reunion requests

The Israeli defence ministry is purchasing 40,000 tents ahead of its planned ground invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.

Over 1 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah in tents and makeshift homes. Israel has said it will evacuate civilians ahead of a ground operation, but many Palestinians have said there is nowhere safe to flee to. 

Rafah itself is not safe, and has been subjected to daily air strikes since the beginning of the war. 

There was no immediate confirmation from the defence ministry of the purchase of tents.

The planned Rafah assault has been widely condemned around the world, including by Israel's closest ally, the United States, which warned that Israel would face global isolation if it went ahead.

The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy has said that Israel's presence in the United Arab Emirates posed a threat to Tehran.

Last week, Israeli air strikes on Iran's consulate in Syria's capital killed seven IRGC officers including two senior commanders.

The UAE, situated across the Gulf from Iran, normalised ties with Israel in a US-brokered deal in 2020.

"We know that the Zionists were not brought to the UAE for economic purposes but rather for security and military work. This is a threat to us and should not happen," IRGC Navy Commander Alireza Tangsiri said, according to Iran's Student News Agency.

Tangsiri said that the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman were no places for Israelis.

"We do not get hit without striking back, but we are also not hasty in our retaliation," Tangsiri said, referring to last week's attack on the consulate. 

Palestinians are recovering the bodies of those killed by Israel’s two-week raid on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, but identification is proving difficult because of the state of decomposition. 

After Israeli forces withdrew from the hospital on 1 April, teams from several government ministries have been deployed to al-Shifa to remove and identify bodies before burying them in cemeteries.

“We are now digging up all the martyrs that were executed by the [Israeli] army,” Hussein Mahassen, ambulance director in the Gaza Strip, told Middle East Eye. “Our capacities are very limited, as we are working with just one bulldozer.”

While it is unclear how many bodies have been buried in the hospital’s yard, the Civil Defence said that they have recovered 409 bodies from the medical complex since the withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Mahassen said his team expects to find between 200 and 300 bodies buried in the ground in al-Shifa, but cannot confirm this number.

Read more: Palestinians recover bodies left by Israeli army during al-Shifa raid