Live: Major clashes break out near Bethlehem after Israeli raid
Live Updates
The UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese condemned Egypt's mega gas deal with Israel, saying it contravenes international law.
Albanese wrote in a post on X: "Egypt can say what it wants but purchasing $35bn of gas from Israel violates int'l law, including the ICJ advisory opinion of 2024, and is, honestly, an incredible sign of support to Israel during the genocide of the Palestinians."
"States must stop placing profits above humanity."
Under the agreement announced earlier this week, Israel will increase the total volume of gas supplied to Egypt to 130 billion cubic metres.
Egypt said the agreement had nothing to do with politics and was a "strictly commercial" arrangement that served a strategic interest for the country.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, described it as the largest gas deal in Israel's history.
New rules in Israel for registering non-governmental organisations, under which more than a dozen groups have already been rejected, could have a catastrophic impact on aid work in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, relief workers warn.
The NGOs have until December 31 to register under the new framework, which Israel says aims not to impede aid distribution but to prevent "hostile actors or supporters of terrorism" operating in the Palestinian territories.
Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism told AFP requests are rejected for "organisations involved in terrorism, antisemitism, delegitimisation of Israel, Holocaust denial, denial of the crimes of October 7".
The NGOs barred under the new rules include Save the Children, one of the best known and oldest in Gaza, where it helps 120,000 children, and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
They are being given 60 days to withdraw all their international staff from the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and Israel, and will no longer be able to deliver any aid.
New details have emerged about the Israeli attack on a school which killed at least six people in Gaza on Friday.
The school was being used as a shelter, where displaced Palestinian families had gathered for a wedding, killing at least six people, including a five-month-old baby.
The Palestinian civil emergency service said several people were also wounded when an Israeli tank shells hit the second floor of the Gaza Martyrs School in the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City.
Witnesses reported that an Israeli tank had advanced into the area and approached the school before firing.
They also said Israeli forces blocked ambulance and civil defence teams from reaching the site for more than two hours, delaying the evacuation of victims.
Civil emergency services added that they were only able to recover the bodies after the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs intervened with Israeli authorities.
Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan has issued a statement saying that representatives from Turkey met with the US, Qatar and Egypt on Friday to discuss the implementation of the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.
Fidan said the talks aimed to ensure that "Gaza is governed by Palestinians" and discussed steps to establish a Board of Peace and International Stabilisation Force.
The meeting in Miami was attended by Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.
In the past 24 hours, 13 Palestinians in Gaza have been reported killed, including seven previously unrecorded victims, according to the health ministry.
The fatalities include six deaths killed by Israeli shelling which targeted a school that had become a makeshift shelter for the displaced in the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, on Friday.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said children in Gaza are dying from the cold weather, urging Israel to allow more aid into the enclave.
"A 29-day-old baby died at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, just two hours after arriving at the paediatric ward supported by MSF," the group said.
"Despite all treatment efforts, the child could not be saved. He died from severe hypothermia."
MSF added that "the harsh winter weather, coupled with already dire living conditions, is exacerbating health risks".
It said it has recorded "high rates of respiratory infections, and these cases are expected to increase throughout the winter, posing a serious threat to children under five".
"As Gaza is experiencing heavy rains and severe storms, the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in makeshift, dilapidated tents that are flooded continues."
Iran has executed a 27-year-old architecture student convicted of spying for the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.
Aghil Keshavarz was put to death on Saturday morning. He had been arrested earlier this year, according to Iranian media, after soldiers caught him taking photographs of an army building in the northwestern city of Urmia.
He was accused of conducting more than 200 missions for the Mossad across multiple Iranian cities.
In October, the Iranian government introduced new legislation making espionage an offence automatically punishable by death.
The Israeli military has continued to violate the ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
On Saturday morning local media reported that Israeli forces have destroyed buildings and deployed artillery shelling east of Gaza City and east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
On Friday night Israeli shelling targeted a school that had become a makeshift shelter for the displaced in the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City. At least six people were killed.
Israeli forces have stormed the occupied West Bank town of al-Zawiya, west of Salfit.
At dawn on Saturday several military vehicles carried out raids on homes, warehouses and workshops, according to the Wafa News Agency.
Several men were reportedly assaulted and detained by Israeli soldiers.
Israeli forces also raided the house of the town's mayor, Amir Shuqair, and arrested his son, according to Wafa.
Hello Middle East Eye readers. Here are some of the latest developments:
- Israeli forces launched raids on homes and other buildings in the town of al-Zawaiya, west of Salfit, in the occupied West Bank on Saturday morning. Israeli soldiers reportedly raided the home of the town's mayor and arrested his son.
- Artillery shelling and gunfire from Israeli drones were reported in areas east of Gaza city, as well as east of Khan Younis in the Gaza strip.
- Doctors Without Borders warned that children in Gaza are dying from the cold weather, urging Israel to increase the amount of aid allowed into Gaza.
- Iran executed a 27-year-old man, reportedly an architecture student, convicted of spying for Israel.
Our live blog will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.
Here are the day's key developments:
- Israeli shelling targeted a school that had become a makeshift shelter for the displaced in the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, on Friday. At least six people were killed.
- The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has warned that 1.6 million people in Gaza remain trapped in a “man-made hunger crisis”, despite limited improvements since the ceasefire began in October.
- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the implementation of the second and third phases of the Gaza ceasefire may be an issue that extends well past the term of Donald Trump's presidency.
- Hamas's security forces in Gaza announced an end to their "Door of Repentance" amnesty programme, which had been targeted at Palestinians who collaborated with Israel or received Israeli or US military support.
- Two British MPs have called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to establish an independent investigation into allegations that the former foreign secretary David Cameron attempted to interfere with the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
- A 32-page PowerPoint presentation entitled the "Sunrise Project", drawn up by US envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has put the cost of reconstructing Gaza into a high-tech urban centre at more than $112b.
A 32-page PowerPoint presentation entitled the "Sunrise Project", drawn up by US envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has put the cost of reconstructing Gaza into a high-tech urban centre at more than $112b.
The plan, seen by The Wall Street Journal and reported on Friday, proposes that the US pay 20 percent of that cost. The project is estimated to take ten years to bring to fruition.
Earlier on Friday, however, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated that negotiations are nowhere near the implementation of phase two of the Gaza ceasefire, given Hamas's unwillingness to disarm.
But the group has already offered to "bury" its weapons and hand over power to a Palestinian - not foreign - governing body. Israel, however, has refused the participation of nearly all Palestinian technocrats and bureaucrats who would be suited to govern Gaza.
Israeli shelling targeted a school that had become a makeshift shelter for the displaced in the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, on Friday.
At least six people were killed in the attack according to the Wafa news agency, which described it as an "artillery barrage".
Hamas's security forces in Gaza announced an end to their "Door of Repentance" amnesty programme on Friday, which had been targeted at Palestinians who collaborated with Israel or received Israeli or US military support.
"A number of collaborators have surrendered themselves to the security services, and their cases are currently being processed according to legal procedures," a statement shared on the Al-Haris account on Telegram said.
"We affirm the continued enforcement of the Resistance's decision to pursue and dismantle mercenaries supported by the occupation, down to the last collaborator," the statement continued.
"We strongly warn the weak-willed and ignorant against communicating with mercenary agents or the media outlets that support them, which use various names as a cover to infiltrate the national consciousness in an attempt to legitimise projects of treason."
Two British MPs have called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to establish an independent investigation into allegations that the former foreign secretary David Cameron attempted to interfere with the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
In a letter on Friday, shared exclusively with Middle East Eye, Labour MPs Richard Burgon and Imran Hussain urged the government to examine claims that a senior figure in the previous Conservative government threatened the court's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, with severe consequences if he pursued arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
The letter follows a recent submission to the ICC by Khan in which he alleged that a senior British official had warned him that the UK would defund and withdraw from the court in the leadup to his application for warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
