Live: Major clashes break out near Bethlehem after Israeli raid

Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian and foreign solidarity activists in the Bedouin community of Shalal al-Auja, north of Jericho, at dawn on Thursday, reported the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The Israeli attacked areas north of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian media on Thursday.

Good morning Middle East Eye readers,

Here are the latest updates from Israel's war on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank:

• Israeli forces killed at least seven Palestinians in Gaza, among them two children, continuing the relentless assault on an already devastated civilian population.

• Israel has said that it will allow the Rafah crossing to open, but only for people to leave Gaza, effectively turning it into a one-way exit from a territory it has reduced to rubble.

• Egypt rejected that condition, saying the crossing can only operate if movement is permitted in both directions.

• The Israeli military also announced it had received human remains believed to belong to one of the two captives still held in Gaza, transferred by Palestinian groups through the International Committee of the Red Cross.

• The World Health Organization said more than 8,000 Palestinians have been evacuated for medical treatment since October 2023, yet at least another 16,500 sick and wounded people remain trapped, denied urgent care outside the enclave.

• Palestinian media reported that Israeli occupation forces carried out demolitions on residential buildings in eastern Gaza City, erasing entire neighbourhoods.

• Al Jazeera Arabic reported that the Israeli occupation army launched an air raid on areas inside the "yellow line" in the northern Gaza Strip.

Israel bombed an entire apartment building in the West Bank - home to more than 30 people - as a collective punishment because the extended family of a bus bombing suspect lived there, Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday.

The family of  Abdul Karim Sanoubar told Al Jazeera they were given two minutes notice to evacuate the building. 

Sanoubar, 30, is currently detained in Israel on allegations that he conspired to blow up parked buses in Bat Yam Tel Aviv in February. Nobody was killed or injured in the attack.

However, despite Sanoubar not being convicted of the crime, Israel targeted the home of his extended family members in Nablus. 

In addition, the Israeli army informed the family that their former home has been 'confiscated', meaning that is now illegal for them to return to it or rebuild it. 

Sanoubar’s uncle, Moayed, condemned the destruction as an “act of terrorism” against his family and others who “have nothing to do with any crime,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We’re not the terrorists; they are. This is completely unjust.”

Gaza's civil defence agency said that a series of Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed five people, including two children, in a shelter camp housing people displaced by Israel's war.

"Five citizens, including two children, killed and others injured, some seriously, as a result of an Israeli missile strike" in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Yunis, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

The agency said the strike hit near the Kuwaiti Field Hospital in Khan Yunis and "targeted" a shelter camp. 

The hospital also reported that five people, including two children aged eight and 10, were killed and another 32 were wounded.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says removing "extremism from the people of Gaza" is the last option if Hamas is not dealt with, Al Jazeera Arabic reported on Wednesday. 

He made the comments while speaking about the future of Hamas in Gaza. "Hamas cannot remain in Gaza, and eliminating it will be either through an international force or the hard way," he said.

"The second stage aims to disarm Hamas and make Gaza weapon-free, and I believe there is a third, which is to remove extremism from the people of Gaza."

Israel has violated the 10 October ceasefire on an almost-daily basis and killed more than 360 Palestinians to date.

Israel's air strikes on Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday are said to have killed six people, including children. 

Israel said it carried out multiple air strikes and struck a Hamas commander in the southern Gaza Strip in retaliation for four of their soldiers being wounded by Hamas members who have been stuck in tunnels in Rafah since the ceasefire on 10 October, Haaretz reported. 

Israel has refused to allow them safe passage out of the tunnels, despite a ceasefire agreement being in place. 

Israel carried out four air strikes on Khan Younis on Wednesday, according to Haaretz.

The air strikes came hours after four to five Israeli soldiers were wounded after they attacked Palestinians emerging from tunnels in Israel-controlled Rafah in the Gaza Strip earlier on Wednesday.

Around 60 to 80 members of Hamas are said to be trapped in tunnels in the area despite them requesting safe passage. Israel says they must either surrender or be killed.

A ceasefire has been in place since 10 October, but Israel has killed more than 300 Palestinians since then. 

The Hind Rajab Foundation, the Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights have called on Canadian authorities to arrest former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for war crimes ahead of a planned visit to Toronto, Canada.

The three organisations filed a complaint with the Canadian Department of Justice on Wednesday, detailing Olmert and Livni’s participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 2008–2009 Gaza War.

The complaint urges an open investigation into their roles and a warrant for their arrest pursuant to Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act and in compliance with the country's obligation under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 to “seek out and prosecute” those reasonably suspected of grave breaches who set foot in Canada. 

Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Israel needs to withdraw from parts of Lebanon that it still occupies for the first phase of Hezbollah's disarmament to take place, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Salam said he is open to other countries looking into Hezbollah's arms depots in southern Lebanon.

He also said the country will look at other options for the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon with members of the UN Security Council later this week.

He added that if Israel adhered to a 2002 Arab peace plan, then normalisation would follow, but they were nowhere close to that yet.

Israel’s High Court of Justice has blocked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu government’s choice to lead the Sde Teiman abuse leak inquiry.

The Supreme Court president and justices said that retired Israeli judge Yosef Ben Hamo does not meet the court's criteria for appointment as an official overseeing the investigation because he is not a senior state employee.

"In such a case, there is a heightened concern that this individual will act as the minister's emissary," justice Yael Willner said.

"This is in contrast to a civil servant who already holds a specific position in public service, and alongside their routine duties, is assigned additional responsibility by the minister to supervise the investigation."

She also said that the purpose of a civil servant is "to mitigate concern of improper interference by the ministerial level and to prevent involvement of extraneous considerations".

Ben Hamo was selected by justice Minister Yariv Levin to investigate whether former Israeli army military advocate general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi leaked a video showing alleged abuse of a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention centre. 

Israel announced on Wednesday that residents of the Gaza Strip could leave the territory for Egypt "in the coming days", in accordance with a measure provided in the peace plan, but Cairo denied any agreement to that effect, AFP reported.

"In accordance with the ceasefire agreement and a directive from the political level, the Rafah crossing will open in the coming days exclusively for the departure of residents of the Gaza Strip to Egypt," Israel's Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), which upholds government policy in the Palestinian Territories, told AFP.

Cogat specified that the opening of the crossing point would be done in coordination with Egypt and the European Union.

But Egypt has denied any agreement with Israel on opening the Rafah border crossing for exits only, demanding passage in both directions.

"If an agreement is reached to open the crossing, it will be in both directions to enter and exit the Gaza Strip, in accordance with the plan of US President Donald Trump," the state information services said in a statement.

The head of the European mission for the Rafah crossing point did not respond to a press query. 

The crossing point briefly reopened in January 2025, during the first ceasefire, firstly to enable authorised residents to leave Gaza, and secondly to allow aid trucks to enter.

In addition to being included in the peace plan brokered by President Donald Trump, the reopening of the Rafah crossing point has long been demanded by the United Nations and humanitarian organisations.

The Israeli army took control of the Palestinian side in May 2024. 

The crossing is one of the main exit points for Palestinians in Gaza, which has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007.

Lebanese and Israeli civilian representatives held their first direct talks Wednesday in decades, part of a year-old ceasefire monitoring mechanism in the war with Hezbollah, a source close to the talks told AFP.

The meeting was taking place at the UN peacekeeping force's headquarters in Lebanon Naqura near the border with Israel, the source said, as part of a mechanism to oversee the ceasefire that took hold in November 2024.

Morgan Ortagus, the US special envoy for Lebanon, also attended Wednesday's meeting, the source added. The United States has been piling pressure on Lebanon to rapidly disarm Hezbollah.

Ortagus was a day earlier in Jerusalem where she met Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar. Israeli media said she also met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Until now Israel and Lebanon, which have no formal diplomatic relations, had insisted on keeping military officers in the role.

The United States has pushed for direct talks between the two neighbours in a bid to stabilise the region and further weaken Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Netanyahu's office announced he was sending a civilian representative to meet officials in Lebanon, in what it called a first attempt to establish a basis for ties between the two countries.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun's office said Wednesday his delegation would be led by former ambassador Simon Karam and it had been informed that Israel would include "a non-military member in its delegation."

Reporting by AFP

Israel said it was preparing to receive the remains of a captive from Gaza, where Palestinian armed groups are still holding two bodies.

"Israel is preparing to receive in the coming hours from the Red Cross the coffin of a hostage who was killed and whose body was located today during a search in the northern Gaza Strip," said the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

They said the body would then be identified after it was received.

Hamas's armed wing had announced earlier that it and its ally, Islamic Jihad, would return the body of a captive at 5pm local time.