Israel-Palestine live: Netanyahu rejects Hamas ceasefire proposal, vows ‘total victory’
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An 18-year-old trapped in Gaza is bringing a legal case against the British government after he was refused entry clearance to join his family in the UK.
The teen, whose identity has not been revealed, has been displaced internally in the besieged enclave repeatedly since 7 October.
At the time the conflict began his parents were visiting his two older brothers who are currently based in the UK.
The legal case will argue on Wednesday that the 18-year-old - described by the Guardian as "emotionally, financially and practically dependent on his parents" - made successful entry clearance applications to visit his brothers in the UK alongside his parents, and had provided biometrics at a visa application centre (VAC) as recently as August 2022.
In December, he made an urgent entry clearance application to the Home Office but was refused, stating that he had not submitted his biometrics at a VAC in Gaza, despite the fact all the centres are now closed due to the fighting.
“This situation is extremely grave. It’s a ticking timebomb – he could be killed at any point. The toll on my parents is indescribable," his eldest brother said, according to the Guardian.
"My mother has Parkinson’s, the tremors have worsened now and it is spreading to other parts of her body. Every day, the probability he will be killed gets higher and higher. The anxiety is literally killing my mother, while my brother is alone, desperate and abandoned.”
Around 8,000 displaced people were have been evacuated from Al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, which has been under siege by Israeli forces, according to the Red Cross.
"The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is beyond catastrophic," Tommaso Della Longa, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
"Eight thousand internally displaced people who sought refuge in our Palestinian Red Crescent hospital in Khan Yunis...left the hospital yesterday."
The results of the Gaza war are still to become clear, but it is not too early to make a provisional assessment.
The horrific cost in terms of Palestinians killed, injured and displaced is unprecedented in the 75-year struggle between the Israeli state and the Palestinians. Even the Nakba in 1948 did not see this level of death and destruction.
So the first and most obvious point is that the Israelis will not suffer an outright military defeat. This is not surprising, for they are deploying a state-of-the-art military against a largely unarmed, at best poorly armed, population.
So military defeat in any conventional sense was never a likely outcome for Israel.
But even in the military register, the Israelis have not by any means had things all their own way. Given the asymmetry of arms, they have suffered high military casualties.
They have not, and are not likely to, destroy Hamas or decapitate its leadership. Only one Hamas leader has been killed by Israel so far. And the unrelenting and barbaric nature of the Israel army's onslaught will ensure that Hamas will continue to recruit for decades to come.
Many Hamas fighters were orphaned in previous clashes with Israel. Tragically, there are many more orphans now.
Read more: The war on Gaza and the crisis of US power - by John Rees
The Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis has been hit by shrapnel amid intense Israeli shelling and gunfire in its vicinity, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said.
An explosion was reported near a merchant vessel off the coast of the Yemeni port city of Aden on Tuesday, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency and British maritime security firm Ambrey said.
Ambrey said a Marshall Islands-flagged, Greek-owned bulk carrier was targeted while heading through the Maritime Security Transit Corridor southbound about 53 nautical miles southwest of Aden. The vessel was travelling from the US to India.
The vessel and crew were safe, both Ambrey and UKMTO said.
Reporting by Reuters
Hundreds of Israeli demonstrators blocked dozens of aid trucks from entering the Gaza Strip at the Karem Abu Salem (Karem Shalom) crossing on Tuesday, the Israeli Channel 12 reported.
The crossing, which connects Israel with Gaza, has been used by Israeli troops to inspect aid trucks before they can enter the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Despite severe restrictions imposed by the Israeli army on which food and medical items can enter, many Israelis still oppose allowing any humanitarian relief from reaching the 2.3 million civilian population of Gaza. They say aid should enter in exchange for the release of captives.
The Israeli army announced the Karem Abu Salem crossing a closed military zone late last month to prevent protesters from blocking the entry of aid trucks.
However, Channel 12 said hundreds of people managed to reach the area on Tuesday and blocked 132 trucks from crossing into Gaza.
McDonald's and Starbucks have seen their profits take a hit as a result of the conflict in Gaza, with the companies pointing to boycotts over their perceived pro-Israel stances.
According to CNBC, McDonald's shares fell nearly 4 percent on Monday following reports that a sales slowdown in the Middle East had contributed to its fourth-quarter revenue miss.
For its part, Starbucks’ shares fell around two percent over the past week, saying its US sales were also harmed in the final three months of 2023.
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said sales had been weaker in Muslim-majority countries - such as Malaysia and Indonesia - as well as across the Middle East.
“The ongoing impact of the war on these franchisees’ local business is disheartening and ill-founded,” Kempczinski said on Monday, speaking to analysts on the company’s conference call.
Read more: McDonald's and Starbucks sales hurt by Israel-Palestine boycotts
Israeli forces are "tightening" their siege of Khan Younis' main hospital, the Nasser Medical Complex, the Palestinian health ministry said on Tuesday.
It added that attacks are intensifying in its vicinity with footage captured by journalists showing Israeli snipers shooting at people moving near the hospital's entrance.
"The Israeli occupation is putting the lives of 450 wounded patients, 300 medical staff and 10,000 displaced people in immediate danger," the ministry said in a statement.
The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of escalating its "crime of genocide" against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank ahead of a scheduled visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Tel Aviv later today.
Israel is sending "strong messages" to the US and the international community by threatening to invade Rafah in the Gaza Strip, where 1.3 million displaced people are crammed, the Palestinian foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the Wafa news agency.
The ministry urged the US to recognise the state of Palestine and support it in obtaining a UN full membership to reduce tension and achieve "security and stability" in the region.
The regional Government of Wallonia in southern Belgium has suspended two arms export licences to Israel, local media reported.
Four NGOs, including Amnesty International, wrote a letter calling on Wallonia's Minister-President Elio Di Rupo to stop arms exports or face legal action.
In response, Di Rupo temporarily suspended the export licences, citing "the unacceptable deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip" and the International Court of Justice's recent decision ordering Israel to avoid genocide in Gaza.
Demonisation is a familiar play when organisations and governments challenge western policy.
One of the arguments now making the rounds about the Houthi movement in Yemen is that its actions against Red Sea shipping have nothing to do with Gaza at all - and that even if Israel stopped the war, the Houthis wouldn’t stop.
Underlying this is not just demonisation, but also racism. British officials have repeatedly made such claims in recent days, aiming to justify launching strikes without parliamentary approval. The Houthis’ actions have “nothing to do with the Israel-Gaza conflict”, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps noted.
This is despite the fact that the Houthis have consistently said they are only targeting ships heading to Israel, and have avoided causing any deaths - while suffering their own casualties in the US-British attacks launched since 12 January. The most their fighters have done is taken ship crew members hostage.
The Houthis have won huge support across the Global South because the Red Sea attacks are seen as a brave, if modest, effort by the little guy against a tyrannical force.
Even if the Houthis were solely playing cynically to global audiences, as critics argue, it is hard to see them forfeiting that support by continuing to disrupt shipping without cause after a Gaza ceasefire.
At the same time, the Houthi policy has proven to be remarkably effective. With relatively little effort, they have caused major shipping companies to avoid the Red Sea, through which around 12 percent of global trade passes.
Global supply chains are clogging up as ships take the long route around Africa, with huge extra costs in fuel, or companies look at alternative land and air routes.
Read more: How Yemen's Houthis have defied western stereotypes - by Andrew Hammond
Israeli snipers have shot and killed livestock in the Khan Younis area according to Palestinian media.
Footage captured by journalist Ismail Abu Omar showed three sheep being gunned down in Bani Suheila town.
Scores of pro-Palestine Jordanians have been arrested and harassed by authorities since October for participating in protests or online advocacy in solidarity with Gaza, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday.
The repression highlights an "abusive use" of a controversial cybercrimes law to bring charges against some of the peaceful demonstrators, HRW added.
“Jordanian authorities are trampling the right to free expression and assembly in an effort to tamp down Gaza-related activism,” said Lama Fakih, Middle East director at HRW.
The Israeli war on Gaza has provoked a massive nationwide protest movement in Jordan that drew in thousands of demonstrators weekly.
The protesters have called for a radical change in Jordan's policy towards Palestine, including walking out of the peace treaty with Israel.
Israeli forces have killed at least 107 Palestinians over the past 24 hours in 12 "massacres", according to the Palestinian health ministry.
This brings the Palestinian death toll in four months to more than 27,585 with almost 67,000 wounded and 7,000 missing, who are believed to be dead and buried under rubble.
Over 70 percent of victims are children and women, according to health officials.
Israel's ejection orders for Palestinians now cover two-thirds of the Gaza Strip, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Tuesday.
An estimated 85 percent of the besieged enclave's population has been displaced since the start of the Israeli onslaught, equivalent to 1.9 million people.
According to OCHA, more than half of Gaza's 2.2 million population is now crammed in Rafah, a small town on the border with Egypt.
