Live: Hamas agrees to release 10 Israeli captives

Israel's military said on Tuesday that it had expanded its operations in Gaza days ahead of a planned trip to Washington by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 7 July, AFP reported.

The intensified operations came after days of mounting calls for a ceasefire, and a month after Hamas submitted a ceasefire deal to Israel. Al Jazeera reported on Monday. Hamas had not heard anything back from Israel or the US on their proposed deal during this time.

In response to reports of deadly strikes in the north and south of the territory, the Israeli army told AFP it was "operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities".

Separately, it said on Tuesday morning that in recent days it had "expanded its operations to additional areas within the Gaza Strip, eliminating dozens of terrorists, and dismantling hundreds of terror infrastructure sites both above and below ground".

Raafat Halles, 39, from the Shujaiya district of Gaza City, said "air strikes and shelling have intensified over the past week"and tanks have been advancing.

"I believe that every time negotiations or a potential ceasefire are mentioned, the army escalates crimes and massacres on the ground," he said. "I don't know why."

Amer Daloul, a 44-year-old resident of Gaza City, also reported fiercer fighting between Israeli forces and fighters in recent days, telling AFP that he and his family were forced to flee the tent they were living in at dawn on Tuesday "due to heavy and random gunfire and shelling".

In the southern city of Rafah, resident Mohammed Abdel Aal, 41, said "tanks are present" in most parts of town.

Israeli soldiers killed two people in the West Bank on Tuesday, one of them a 15-year-old boy, AFP reported, citing the Palestinian health ministry. 

"At dawn today, Tuesday, 15-year-old Amjad Nassar Abu Awad was killed by Israeli soldiers in the city of Ramallah," the ministry said in a statement.

The Israeli military told AFP that during an overnight operation in the area, "several terrorists hurled rocks towards [Israeli] soldiers", prompting them to fire "warning shots".

"The incident is under review," it added.

Around 20 people, most of them young boys, gathered at a Ramallah hospital to mourn Abu Awad, an AFP journalist reported.

The boys, who were in tears, touched Abu Awad's face in the hospital morgue.

The ministry also said 24-year-old Samer Bassam Zagharneh was killed by Israeli soldiers near the town of Dhahiriya, in the suburbs of Hebron, at dawn on Tuesday.

The army told AFP that soldiers operating in the area overnight saw a man attempting to cross the frontier between Israel and the West Bank "in the area of al-Ramadin".

"The soldiers opened fire according to standard operating procedures, and a hit was identified", the army said.

Two Palestinian teenagers, aged 13 and 15, were killed last week in the West Bank towns of Al-Yamoun and Kafr Malik, respectively.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and violence towards Palestinians has soared since October 2023. Since then, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 947 Palestinians.

Over the same period, at least 35 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to Israeli figures.

At least 350 kidney failure patients in Gaza face imminent death as the Strip’s largest medical complex announces a halt to dialysis sessions due to fuel shortages.

On Tuesday morning, the head of al-Shifa Complex in Gaza City announced that the dialysis ward would completely shut down by noon, as fuel needed to operate the generators had run out.

“This is happening for the first time since the beginning of the war on Gaza,” Dr Muhammad Abu Hassira, a specialist in internal medicine and nephrology at al-Shifa Medical Complex, told Middle East Eye.

“During the worst periods of the war, the dialysis unit was forced to suspend operations multiple times for several days due to Israeli raids on the hospital. Today, the hospital is still partially functioning, but we simply cannot run the dialysis machines because there is no fuel.”

Dr Abu Hassira confirmed that the dialysis ward had completely shut down earlier in the day, with the small amount of remaining fuel running a single generator reserved exclusively for the intensive care unit.

Read more: Gaza’s largest hospital forced to end dialysis services amid fuel crisis

A UN expert has called on corporations to cut ties with Israel and for executives to be held accountable for enabling and profiting from crimes including illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese's call for action comes in a scathing new report in which she names over 60 companies, including major technology firms like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, alleging their involvement in what she calls "the transformation of Israel's economy of occupation to an economy of genocide".

"By shedding light on the political economy of an occupation turned genocidal, the report reveals how the forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech . . . while investors and private and public institutions profit freely," Albanese writes in the report.

"Too many influential corporate entities remain inextricably financially bound to Israel’s apartheid and militarism." 

The detailed, 24-page report, which is set to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday, identifies dozens of corporate actors, including those involved in the arms, technology, construction and energy sectors, which it says are complicit.

Francesca Albanese: Tech firms profiting from Israeli 'economy of genocide'

The Israeli army on Monday detained several members of the same Palestinian family in Masafer Yatta, in the occupied West Bank, after they attempted to remove a group of settlers encroaching on their land.

Armed Israeli settlers brought their livestock to graze on land in Khirbet al-Markaz, a village in the Masafer Yatta area south of Hebron, prompting clashes with the Palestinian landowners.

The settlers opened fire, causing no injuries, before the Israeli army intervened to protect the settlers.

The Palestinians, all members of the Makhamreh family, remained in detention on Tuesday.

Osama Makhamreh told Middle East Eye that armed Israeli settlers had raided Khirbet al-Markaz, a village in the Masafer Yatta area south of Hebron, bringing livestock to graze among olive trees - a pastoral settler policy increasingly used to seize Palestinian land.

In response, local residents headed to the area in an attempt to drive the settlers away, only to find them armed. The settlers opened fire, though no injuries were reported.

Read more: Israeli army detains Palestinian family members after settlers attack village

After suffering with diarrhoea for five days, Awnee al-Jorani, a baby born in Gaza in the midst of Israel's war on the besieged Palestinian enclave, was taken to Nasser Medical Complex in the southern city of Khan Younis.

The baby's grandmother told Middle East Eye he had a number of other symptoms, including a high fever and constant crying. He was refusing to drink anything.

After being admitted to the hospital, al-Jorani was diagnosed with meningitis. The baby's worried grandmother said his mother was not able to breastfeed him because of the lack of available nutrition in Gaza and the stress brought on by Israeli bombardment.

“As you can see, the kid is tired, weak and his condition is poor," the grandmother said. "He just wails all night and during the day he’s just staring out into nothingness, he’s just frail.”

Growing numbers of children in Gaza are contracting meningitis, with the disease spreading across the Strip and dozens admitted to Nasser Hospital.

Read more: The Palestinian babies stricken by meningitis in Gaza

 

Iran's embassy in Berlin has rejected accusations of "an alleged planned attack on Jewish institutions" in the German capital.

Earlier, German prosecutors said a Danish national had been arrested on suspicion of spying for Iran with the aim of collecting information on Jewish sites and individuals in Berlin.

"These unfounded and dangerous accusations appear to be part of a deliberate campaign to divert public attention," the Iranian embassy said in a statement.

The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza by Israeli forces since October 2023 has risen to 56,647, the Palestinian health ministry has announced. At least 134,105 have been wounded during that time. 

Over the past 24 hours, Israeli forces killed 112 Palestinians in the enclave, and wounded 463 more. 

Since Israel unilaterally ended the ceasefire in March, its forces have killed 6,315 in Gaza and wounded a further 22,064. 

President Donald Trump has told reporters that he will discuss the situations in Gaza and Iran when he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House next week. 

"We hope [a ceasefire] is going to happen and we're looking for it to happen sometime next week," he said on Tuesday. "We want to get our hostages back."

More than 130 NGOs have called for immediate action to end the “deadly” US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid scheme, and revert back to United Nations-led aid coordination mechanisms. 

The GHF began operating in late May, following a three-month total blockade on the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces. Since then, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed and around 4,000 wounded by Israeli troops while attempting to access food and aid supplies. 

“Today, Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” the NGOs said in a joint statement on Tuesday. 

The signatories include Oxfam, Save the Children, Amnesty, Doctors Without Borders and Action Aid. 

Previously, during the two-month ceasefire between mid-January and mid-March, 400 aid distribution points were in operation in the enclave. That has now been replaced by four militarised distribution sites, forcing over two million people into crowded zones where they face Israeli gunfire.

Read more: Over 130 NGOs call for end to 'deadly' US-Israeli aid distribution scheme

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, released the report late Monday, describing Israel’s war as a “genocidal campaign” that profits major corporations.

"“While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, this report shows why Israel's genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many,” Albanese wrote in her 27-page report.

The investigation draws on more than 200 submissions from states, rights groups, academics, and private firms.

Allegations from the report:

• Over 60 companies from sectors including arms manufacturing, tech, and construction are named.

• Lockheed Martin and Leonardo are accused of supplying weapons used in Gaza bombings.

• Caterpillar and HD Hyundai allegedly provided machinery used in home demolitions and destruction in Palestinian areas.

• Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Palantir are described as “central” to Israeli surveillance and military tech operations.

• Palantir reportedly offers AI support to Israeli forces, though the report lacks detailed examples.

At least 51 Palestinians have been killed across the Gaza Strip since early Tuesday, as Israeli forces intensified attacks throughout the enclave, hospital sources have confirmed.

Among those killed were 16 people shot while waiting for humanitarian aid, according to medical officials.

Punk bands have always been known for crossing the red lines of polite society, for shocking the mainstream. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be punks.

They are not there to give people a warm, fuzzy feeling about the world. For that, there is always James Blunt or Coldplay. 

Punks are there to channel the anger and alienation that many feel against the hypocrisy and bigotry of society. And at Glastonbury, both Kneecap and Bob Vylan held a mirror up to the UK over its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Cue hysteria and confected outrage.

Rapper Bobby Vylan’s chant on a sunny afternoon at the Glastonbury music festival began with the familiar “free, free Palestine”. The crowd chanted along with him, highlighting the widespread support for the Palestinian cause among festival-goers, and among wider British society.

He then said: “But have you heard this one?” As he launched into a chant of “death, death to the IDF”, referencing the Israeli army, the crowd roared the same line back in response.

Read more: 'Death to the IDF' is not antisemitic. Reserve your outrage for Israeli crimes in Gaza

At least ten Palestinians have been killed after an Israeli air strike targeted a residential home in the Khan Younis refugee camp, according to Nasser Medical Complex.

The strike hit the densely populated area in southern Gaza, where many families have taken shelter following repeated displacement.

Passing by Morocco’s ports, it is impossible not to notice Maersk dominating the shipping containers. The heavy presence of the Danish company in the North African country’s harbours might not be overly intriguing, if the international logistics giant was not known for shipping military equipment to Israel amid its war on Gaza.

Morocco has become a crucial location on the arms route that facilitates shipments of military cargo to Israel, especially through Maersk. This includes components of F-35 jets, which have fuelled Israel’s attacks on Palestinians.

A recent report by Declassified UK and the Irish investigative news outlet The Ditch delved into Morocco’s role in transferring the components of F-35 fighter jets via Maersk.

The report specified a shipment in April, saying the jet equipment set sail from the port of Houston, in the United States. Two weeks later, the US-flagged Maersk Detroit arrived in Tangier, Morocco, where the cargo was transferred onto another container ship named Nexoe Maersk.

Read more: Fuelling the ‘machinery of genocide’: Morocco’s backdoor support for Israel’s war on Gaza