Jordan demands ‘war crimes’ probe

Here’s a look at recent developments:

• According to local media reports, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has arrived in Israel and begun his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
• The Qassam Brigades and al-Quds Brigades have said they engaged the Israeli forces in Rafah in southern Gaza.
• The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza has told Al Jazeera Arabic that since yesterday, the hospital has received about 60 bodies, most of them women and children, due to the Israeli bombing of a crowded residential area in Jabalia.
• The Israeli military has claimed killing Hamas official Azmi Abu Daqqa, who was reportedly involved with the supply of weapons and funds to the Palestinian group.
• Videos verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking unit have shown illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank attacking aid trucks heading to the Gaza Strip.
• Gaza’s civil defence has announced that Israel’s forces have destroyed 300 homes in Jabalia in northern Gaza since the beginning of its operation in the city earlier this month.
• The Government Media Office in Gaza has reported that Israeli forces had prevented 3,000 aid trucks from entering Gaza in the past two weeks.
• Israeli forces have intensified attacks across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 20 people in the Nuseirat refugee camp and nine Palestinians in Gaza City.
• Netanyahu has responded to Gantz’s call for a post-war plan for Gaza, saying the war cabinet member’s demands would mean a “defeat for Israel”.
  

  Israeli military claim to have killed senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip

  The Israeli military says the official, Azmi Abu Daqqa, was involved with the supply of weapons and funds to the Palestinian group.

  It claims he was killed while travelling in a vehicle in a joint operation involving the Israeli Air Force and an Israeli intelligence division.

  The Israeli military said it had also attacked dozens of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, including “tactical-level” Hamas commanders who were preparing to attack Israeli forces in Rafah.

  Israel has killed at least 35,456 Palestinians since October 7: Gaza ministry

  At least 35,456 Palestinians have been killed and 79,476 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, its Health Ministry says.

  The ministry added that 70 people were killed and 110 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period.

  Qassam Brigades claim hitting Israeli tank in Jabalia

  The armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, has said it targeted a Merkvah 4 tank in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

  The tank was attacked with Al-Yassin 105 rockets next to the Imad Aqel Mosque, according to the group’s statement on Telegram. It did not elaborate on the results of the attack.

  Palestinian armed groups and Israel have reportedly engaged in strong clashes in and around the camp.

  Here’s what you need to know about Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody

  • The number of Palestinians detained since October 7 in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem has risen to 8,680, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said last week in a joint statement.
  • As of Wednesday, there are 9,300 political prisoners held in Israeli prisons and 3,424 administrative detainees (held without charge or trial), according to estimates from the Ramallah-based Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.
  • That’s a sharp uptick from the 5,200 that were in Israeli prisons before October 7.
  • These figures do not include the thousands of adults and children the Israeli army has reportedly detained, tortured and interrogated in makeshift prisons across Gaza, outside any legal or civilian oversight.
  • Palestinian prisoners who have been released have reported being beaten and humiliated before and after the start of the war on Gaza on October 7.
    

    Verified videos show Israeli settlers attacking Gaza aid trucks in West Bank

    Videos verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad news agency show illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank attacking aid trucks heading to the Gaza Strip near the town of Tarqumiyah, west of Hebron.

    The footage shared on Telegram by Palestinian media platforms showed destroyed boxes of food scattered on the asphalt surface and a number of trucks surrounded by a group of people.

    The aid sent from Jordan passes through the West Bank to reach Gaza.

    Aid shortages could have ‘apocalyptic’ consequences on Gaza Strip: UN official

    The UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, says the stranglehold on aid reaching Gaza threatens an “apocalyptic” outcome as he warned of famine in the besieged enclave.

    “If fuel runs out, aid doesn’t get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more. It will be present,” Griffiths told AFP on the sidelines of meetings with Qatari officials in Doha.

    An Israeli incursion into Rafah, launched in the face of international outcry, has deepened an already perilous humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

    Griffith said about 50 trucks of aid per day could reach the hardest-hit north of Gaza through the reopened Beit Hanoon (Erez) crossing.

    But battles near the Rafah crossing and the Karem Abu Salem crossing, which Israel calls the Kerem Shalom, in Gaza’s south, meant the vital routes were “effectively blocked”, he explained.

    “So aid getting in through land routes to the south and for Rafah, and the people dislodged by Rafah is almost nil,” Griffiths added.

    Sullivan arrives in Israel, starts meetings with officials: Reports

    White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has arrived in Israel and started his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to local media reports.

    President Isaac Herzog is scheduled to meet with Sullivan at 5:30pm (15:30 GMT), after the latter’s meeting with the prime minister.

    Smotrich calls for permanent Israeli military presence in Gaza Strip: Report

    Israel’s Channel 12 reports that far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for a permanent presence of Israeli forces in the entire Gaza Strip.

    He also called for an ultimatum to Hezbollah asking the Lebanese armed group to either cease to attack Israel and withdraw its forces as far as beyond the Litani River or face Israeli military action and occupation of southern Lebanon.

    Hezbollah and the Israeli military have frequently traded fire since October 8 after the group launched attacks on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

    The cross-border attacks have reawakened memories of historic tensions between the two forces that had been relatively dormant since 2006 and have led to fears of a greater regional conflagration.

     Desperate scenes in Gaza as aid trucks arrive via US-built floating pier

    Desperate Palestinians were filmed clambering onto aid trucks carrying supplies that were delivered via the floating pier built by the US military.

    Kamal Adwan Hospital receives dozens of bodies after Jabalia bombing: Director

    The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza has told Al Jazeera Arabic that since yesterday, they have received about 60 bodies, most of them women and children, due to the Israeli bombing of a crowded residential area in Jabalia.

    Palestinian relatives wailed as victims including an infant were rushed to the hospital, following Israeli strikes and heavy clashes in Jabalia.

    Abu Nabil, a Jabalia resident, said “tanks and bulldozers approached our homes, forcing us to leave, after they struck a neighbouring house, injuring us”.

    “I call upon all free people in the world, to anyone with a shred of humanity … there are massacres happening here. Children are being torn to pieces. What’s the fault of these children and women?” he added.

    Israel ‘regularly and blatantly’ disregards UN in Gaza: Lazzarini

    Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of UNRWA, says “almost nothing” in terms of aid is getting into the Gaza Strip after Israel closed the Rafah crossing and Karem Abu Salem crossing, known as Kerem Shalom to Israelis.

    Speaking at a news conference with Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, he said the UN has been “regularly and blatantly disregarded in Gaza”.

    “Look at the number of staff who have been killed, more than 200, among them 189 staff from UNRWA,” he said.

    He added that there have been more than 160 UN premises that have been damaged or fully destroyed. A number of UN staff have been rounded up, arrested, mistreated, tortured and forced into confessions during Israel’s war on Gaza, Lazzarini added.

    Israeli claims against UNRWA now ‘null and void’: Jordanian FM

    Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi says the UN has responded “responsibly” to Israeli claims earlier this year that 12 UNRWA members participated in Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which killed more than 1,030 people.

    The claims against UNRWA led to a massive funding deficit as several donor countries announced cuts.

    Speaking at a news conference, he said: “I think the independent report that was headed by the previous foreign minister of France [Catherine Colonna] proves that UNRWA is totally committed to all the principles and code of ethics and the rules and regulations of the United Nations, and those accusations proved null and void.”

    The review made clear that Israel failed to support its claims about UNRWA staff belonging to either Hamas’s military wing or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

    The claim led to more than a dozen major donors, including the US and the UK, suspending their funding to the UN agency.

    Pro-Palestine students at Oxford stage ‘death protest’ over Gaza war

    Students from the University of Oxford have organised a “death protest” on the doorsteps of the famous Sheldonian Theatre in order to denounce the failure to respond to the demands of the student movement.

    Students have been protesting for 13 days demanding their university sever relations with Israel and companies profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza amid a global student movement against the “genocide” of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

    Dozens of students lay at the entrance to the theatre where the graduation ceremonies of various faculties are held, placing their bodies on the floor in bloodied academic dress. Some of them also lined up on the steps of the theatre with letters with the words “blood on your hands” written on their T-shirts.

    The organisers of the protest explained that each of them is like thousands of Palestinians whose lives and futures were destroyed in the Israeli “genocide” of the Palestinians. They also condemned the silence of the academic community on Israel’s demolition of Gaza universities and the systematic destruction of all avenues of education, as well as the killing of students and teachers.

    The students’ peaceful protest was met with a security guard kicking a number of students and demanding them to leave.

    Political rifts, antigovernment protests, petitions in Israel over war on Gaza

    Here is a quick summary of what public demonstrations against Netanyahu’s government’s handling of the war on Gaza we have seen in Israel over the past 24 hours.

    • Israel’s war cabinet member Benny Gantz threatened to quit the government of Benjamin Netanyahu should the prime minister fail to present a post-war plan for Gaza by June 8.
    • Israeli police detained protesters during a large rally held by families of Israeli captives and antigovernment demonstrators on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv.
    • About 20 protesters calling for national elections blocked the main entrance to Jerusalem this morning.
    • Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that more than 1,000 Israeli academics and administrative staff have signed a petition calling on the Israeli government to immediately put an end to the war and secure the return of the captives held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
      

      Gaza child’s appeal to Jordan’s king over aid airdrops

      A Palestinian child from northern Gaza has sent a message to Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Queen Rania as well as to all Arab officials after the cessation of aid airdrops in Gaza.

      “You used to send us aeroplanes with aids, but now there are no more planes. You cut off all the supplies [that you used to send] to us. You cut off food and drinks and everything,” he said in a video address posted on Instagram by a Palestinian activist. “Why do you do this to us? What have we done to you? Speak, for the sake of God!”