Gaza live: Israel continues bombing central Gaza

The Palestinian group Hamas has "moved the goal post" and changed its demands in the hostage negotiations with Israel mediated by Egypt and Qatar, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.

During a daily press briefing, Miller said that the United States remains committed to advocating for a resolution that secures the release of hostages taken on 7 October and facilitates a cessation of hostilities in Gaza.

The State Department did not say how Hamas has shifted its negotiating position.

Miller added that the US had received a report from former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna regarding the UN aid agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, and is currently reviewing its contents.

Google fired over two dozen employees who protested last week against the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.

The employees were fired following an investigation that revealed they had staged protests within Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California.

According to No Tech For Apartheid, Google and Amazon have a $1.2bn contract, named Project Nimbus, to supply cloud computing services to the Israeli government and military. The group strongly condemned the dismissals, CNN reported.

A Google spokesperson told CNN Thursday that the protests “were part of a long-standing campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don’t work” at the company.

“A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations. Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety,” the spokesperson added.

“We have so far concluded individual investigations that resulted in the termination of employment for 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as needed.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that the United States is investigating allegations of human rights abuses by Israel during its operations against Hamas in Gaza.

Revealing the State Department's yearly human rights report, Blinken dismissed accusations of the United States maintaining a double standard regarding Israel and human rights.

"Do we have a double standard? The answer is no," Blinken told reporters.

On Monday, Gaza's civil defence agency said that health workers had recovered about 200 bodies within the past three days. These individuals were said to have been killed and buried by Israeli forces at a hospital in Khan Younis.

"Our civil defence crews are still recovering bodies from inside Nasser medical complex, and since Saturday bodies of nearly 200 martyrs have been retrieved," Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza's civil defence, told AFP.

The Israeli military did not offer an immediate comment.

French President Emmanuel Macron told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call on Monday that he would stand up to what he said was Iran's efforts to de-stabilise the region.

He added that he also wanted an immediate and lasting ceasefire in Gaza and to prevent further regional escalation, particularly on the northern border with Lebanon.

As many as 50 people have been arrested on the campus of Yale University in the US for "aggravated trespassing" over their participation in a protest camp against the Gaza war.

According to the Yale Daily newspaper, the arrests took place on the third day of protests calling for divesting from weapons manufacturers.

“The university made the decision to arrest those individuals who would not leave the Plaza with the safety and security of the entire Yale community in mind and to allow access to university facilities by all members of our community,” a spokesperson for the university told the newspaper.

One of the protesters told the newspaper that personal belongings had been misplaced during the arrests.

“They dumped them into bags, now it seems like the cops and administration lost them because they have no idea where the belongings are. And that means medication is missing, people can’t reach out to parents, their families,” student Chisato Kimura told the News.

“The cops and administration had no plan. It’s so clear that they had no plans, they currently have no plans. It’s abysmal. I think it shows a complete lack of coordination and complete lack of care for students.” 

At least 8,425 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, according to Palestinian prisoner groups.

The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said in a joint statement on Monday that the number included about 540 children and 66 journalists.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged international backing for Unrwa as he said he would accept the recommendations of the Colonna report.

"He has agreed with Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini that Unrwa, with the secretary-general’s support, will establish an action plan to implement the recommendations," UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

"Moving forward, the secretary-general appeals to all stakeholders to actively support Unrwa, as it is a lifeline for Palestine refugees in the region."

The Colonna report was commissioned by the UN to look at Unrwa's operations and policies in the wake of Israel's allegations that its staff were involved in the 7 October attack.

The report, which will be released on Monday, found that the Israeli government "has not informed Unrwa of any concrete concerns relating to Unrwa staff since 2011".

Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence that staff at Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, are members of terrorist organisations such as Hamas, an independent review led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna has said.

According to the report, seen by Middle East Eye, Unrwa regularly supplies Israel with lists of its employees for vetting, and that "the Israeli government has not informed Unrwa of any concerns relating to any Unrwa staff based on these staff lists since 2011".

Israel's accusations against Unrwa have led to many major donor states suspending their funding of the agency at a time when Palestinians in Gaza are in dire need of aid.

Most of the major donors resumed funding in recent weeks, with the UK saying it would wait for the findings of the Colonna-led report to make a decision. US financial supporting for Unrwa, on the other hand, has been permanently banned by Congress.

I can still feel the weight of that moment back in 2015, sitting in Beirut and sharing my concerns with a friend who works in journalism. I spoke of Israel’s extensive arming of settlers, and my deep worry that it would lead to a surge of violence and ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank. 

My friend looked at me as though I was speaking from some distant, irrational place, and insisted that times had changed - that another Nakba was not within the realm of possibility.

Now, here we are, nine years later, and the very nightmare I feared is unfurling before our eyes.

READ MORE: Settler terrorism: Palestinians are becoming prisoners in their own homeland, Opinion by Falastine Saleh

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to follow Israeli army intelligence chief Aharon Haliva's footsteps and resign over the failures of 7 October.

"Prime Minister Netanyahu should have done the same," Lapid said on X about Haliva's resignation.

Citing three unnamed Israeli officials, the New York Times reports that Israel had planned a much larger strike on Iran following the latter's retaliatory drones and missiles attack on Israel on 13 April.

The original plan was to hit several targets across Iran, including near Tehran, the capital city.

The report says western pressure and fears of a widening conflict led to Israel opting for a smaller response.

Israeli and western officials told the Times that Israel ended up firing a small number of missiles from aircraft positioned several hundreds of miles west of Iran on Friday, while also sending attack drones to confuse Iranian air defences.

"One missile on Friday hit an [anti-aircraft] battery in a strategically important part of central Iran, while another exploded in [mid-air]," the Times said, citing the officials.

"One Israeli official said that the Israeli Air Force intentionally destroyed the second missile once it became clear that the first had reached its target, to avoid causing too much damage. One western official said it was possible the missile had simply malfunctioned."

The attack was apparently originally planned for Monday, 15 April, but was postponed out of fears that Hezbollah in Lebanon might significantly increase attacks on northern Israel.

Gaza's health ministry said that 54 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on the enclave in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 34,151 since 7 October.

Additionally, 77,084 people have been wounded since the start of the war.

A drone attack has been reported on a base hosting American forces in al-Anbar, Iraq.

This is the second attack on US forces in the Middle East in 24 hours, the first one targeting a base in northern Syria.

Earlier today, Iraq's Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah denied announcing that attacks on American positions in the region have resumed, and Iraqi security forces reportedly told AFP that "outlaw elements" were behind the attack in Syria.

Israeli police forces said they caught the two attackers behind the car-ramming and attempted shooting attack in Jerusalem, which lightly injured three people.