Israel’s war on Gaza live: UN says over 75,000 displaced in southern Gaza
- The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says more than 75,000 Palestinians in southern Gaza have been forced to leave their homes, days after many of them were allowed to return.
- Israeli forces have issued new evacuation orders in Khan Younis as they conduct their third military operation there since October. Palestinians say there is no safe place in the entire Gaza Strip.
The 1970s song that brought Palestine resistance to the West
George Totari’s song Leve Palestina is undergoing a major revival and has gained a new life since Israel’s brutal war on Gaza began on October 7.
With his long, greying hair, wide-rimmed spectacles and fiery eyes, the Swedish-Palestinian Christian musician, born in 1946 in Nazareth, remembers his hometown being transformed by illegal Israeli settlements and checkpoints when he was a child.
Palestinian president to visit Russia amid calls for ceasefire
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will visit Moscow next week to discuss the war in Gaza with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the Palestinian ambassador in Moscow says.
Russia’s state-run news agency TASS quoted Ambassador Abdel Hafiz Nofal as saying Abbas will arrive on Monday and meet Putin on Tuesday.
Nofal said the two leaders would discuss events in Gaza since the October 7 attacks on Israel.
He added: “We have a very difficult situation, and Russia is a country that is close to us. We need to consult each other.”
‘Israel keeps shrinking al-Mawasi evacuation zone’
War on Gaza ‘falsely portrayed as conflict. It is genocide’
Abdullah Al-Arian, associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar and a specialist in the modern Middle East, tells Al Jazeera the situation in Gaza is often “falsely portrayed as a conflict between two equal parties when, in reality, it is a genocide being carried out by one side against a defenceless, besieged population”.
Al-Arian suggests that instead of relying on negotiations, there needs to be strong political will from international actors to stop Israel’s actions.
Germany’s Scholz says it’s time to finalise truce deal
Many military objectives in Israel’s fight against Hamas have been achieved while civilian casualties and human suffering in Gaza are enormous, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone conversation, according to a German government statement.
The statement said Scholz told the Israeli leader it is important to break the destructive spiral of violence in the Middle East.
“An end to the war in Gaza would be a decisive step towards a regional de-escalation,” it said.
Scholz also told Netanyahu it is time to finalise an agreement on the release of captives and a ceasefire in Gaza.
Al-Quds Brigades claims attacks on Israeli targets near Khan Younis
The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad says it has bombarded Israeli soldiers and vehicles northeast of the city.
The group said on Telegram that its fighters also bombed an Israeli command centre near an area called Hill 86 in the same region.
‘The more you move, the more suffering and destruction you see’
Salim Oweis, a communications officer at UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa office, has recently returned from Gaza and tells Al Jazeera the reality is much worse than what people see on TV screens.
“We don’t see on the screens the depth of the deaths and destruction, the depths of people suffering and their daily struggles for the basics of the basics,” he said. “So the situation there is really dire.”
“I was based in Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis and also north of Gaza, and to be honest, the more you move, the more suffering and destruction you see. The situation is really beyond description,” he said.
He described the impact of repeated attacks on schools as devastating.
“Those schools are not schools any more. They are very basic shelters for so many families, and we have unfortunately seen in the last 10 months so many of those attacks on schools, on hospitals, on civilian infrastructure that children and families rely on, which makes life even more miserable.”
Hezbollah confirms attack on army site in northern Israel
The Lebanese group says on Telegram that it has struck Israeli soldiers with rockets near a military outpost around the community of Matat.
The statement claimed the attack took place at 11:10am (08:10 GMT) and directly hit the target.
Our correspondent in the region reported earlier that four rockets were fired from southern Lebanon as sirens were heard in parts of northern Israel.
Australia condemns Israeli raid on school sheltering displaced Palestinians
Australia has joined the international community in condemning the deaths of more than 100 civilians in an Israeli bombing of a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City.
“Innocent Palestinians cannot continue to pay the price of defeating Hamas,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a post on X, calling for an “immediate” ceasefire in the besieged enclave.
“Australia condemns the deaths of civilians from Israel’s strike on al-Tabeen School. Israel must comply with international humanitarian law,” Wong said.
Dozens were also injured as an Israeli aircraft targeted Palestinians performing dawn prayers at the school in the city’s Daraj neighbourhood.
