Israel is ready to end the bombardment in Gaza “tomorrow”, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told his French counterpart in France, according to Al Jazeera.
“The way is very simple,” the minister said: “Hostages back, Hamas out.”
“We are still giving a chance to negotiations to extend the ceasefire and release our hostages on the basis of [US special envoy Steve] Witkoff’s proposal, but it is not open-ended,” Saar said.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has urged Hungary to arrest visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu per an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant, AFP reports.
“The ministry calls on the Hungarian government … to comply with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant by immediately handing Netanyahu over to bring him to justice”, the Ramallah-based PA’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement hours after Hungary announced it would withdraw from the ICC.
In a post on X, Israel’s Foreign Minister has thanked Hungary for its decision to pull out from the International Criminal Court and called it an “important decision”, Al Jazeera reports.
“The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defence,” Saar said. “Thank you Hungary for your clear and strong moral stance alongside Israel.”
Dozens of students organised a protest at New York’s Columbia University, demanding the release of detained Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil, Al Jazeera reports.
A number of students chained their hands at the university gate for hours in solidarity with Khalil.
The university’s security intervening to force the students to leave, and cutting the chains from students’ hands was witnessed, according to videos verified by Al Jazeera.
One security officer was seen carrying a girl out by force.
Columbia student demonstrators chain themselves to the gates of Columbia University to denounce the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, in New York City, US.
The health ministry in Gaza has said that 1,163 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed large-scale strikes on March 18, AFP reports.
According to the ministry’s statement, the figure includes 97 people killed in the past 24 hours. It also reported that the overall death toll had reached 50,523 since the onslaught began on October 7, 2023.
Pakistan has condemned “in the strongest possible terms” the continued aggression and atrocities committed by Israeli occupying forces in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in Gaza.
“The indiscriminate violence has claimed thousands of innocent Palestinian lives, including women, children, medical personnel, and humanitarian workers, marking yet another dark chapter in Israel’s brutal occupation,” the Foreign Office said in a statement.
“Pakistan denounces Israel’s latest military offensive aimed at establishing new security corridors, including the illegal seizure of the Morag Corridor and further annexation of Palestinian land.
“The deliberate targeting of a UN-run clinic in Jabalia, which sheltered over 700 displaced civilians, demonstrates Israel’s blatant disregard for international law and humanitarian principles. These actions, coupled with Israel’s clear intent to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland, constitute war crimes under international law,” the FO said.
It added that “of particular concern is the sacrilegious storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex by Israeli occupying forces, during the holy occasion of Eidul Fitr.
“This provocative act not only violates the sanctity of one of Islam’s holiest sites but also demonstrates Israel’s determination to escalate tensions and pursue its expansionist agenda at the expense of regional peace.”
Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Berlin has called for a return to a ceasefire and for aid deliveries to resume into Gaza, AFP reports.
Speaking next to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he said, “Israel’s war on Gaza must stop. The ceasefire must be reinstated … and aid flow must resume.”
“The humanitarian tragedy in Gaza has already reached unspeakable levels and action must be taken to immediately address it. “
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called for a return to “serious” negotiations to end the Gaza conflict as Israel pushed on with a renewed assault targeting Hamas in the territory, AFP reports.
“What is needed now is a return to the ceasefire and the release of all hostages,” Scholz said, urging a return to “serious negotiations with the aim of agreeing a post-war order for Gaza that protects Israel’s security”.
Speaking alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Berlin, Scholz also called for more humanitarian aid for Gaza.
“No humanitarian aid has reached Gaza for a month,” he said. “This cannot and must not continue.” He added that “a sustainable peace that stabilises the situation in the West Bank as well as Gaza can only be achieved through a political solution”.
The Israeli military has said it was investigating a deadly incident last month in which its troops fired on ambulances in Gaza, killing at least 15 medics and rescuers according to the UN, AFP reports.
“The incident from March 23, 2025, in which IDF (military) forces opened fire targeting terrorists advancing in ambulances, has been transferred to the General Staff’s Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism for investigation,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said in a statement.
Hungary’s government has decided to withdraw from the International Criminal Court, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas told state news agency MTI, Reuters reports.
Orban’s government announced the move shortly after Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, sought under an ICC arrest warrant, arrived in Hungary for a state visit.
A spokesperson from the Israeli army has ordered residents of the Shuja’iyya area and the neighborhouds of Al-Jadida, Al-Turkman, Tasbeeh and Al-Zeitoun Al-Sharqi to evacuate.
The Israeli army “is operating with great force in your areas to destroy the terrorist infrastructure,” Avichay Adraee said on X.
“You must evacuate these areas immediately and move to the known shelters in western Gaza City,” it added.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said that Israeli air strikes in the north of the territory killed at least 15 people, which the Israeli military did not immediately confirm, AFP reports.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that the strikes targeted several homes in Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighbourhood.
“There are still a number of people trapped under the rubble,” he said.
The head of the US Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, has visited Israel this week for talks with Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir on regional security issues, the military said, AFP reports.
Kurilla arrived in Israel earlier this week and held a joint meeting with Zamir and other Israeli military commanders “during which they discussed strategic security issues across the region,” the military said in a statement.
Palestinian agency Wafa reports a number of incursions and arrests of Palestinians by soldiers that took place in the early hours.
A Palestinian man was arrested in Beitunia, west of Ramallah, after Israeli troops raided the city, while Israeli forces also stormed the centre of Ramallah.
Four Palestinian men were arrested in Nablus after Israeli forces raided the city, as well as the nearby village of Sarra and the city of Beit Furik.
Israeli forces have also raided the town of al-Khader, south of Bethlehem, and established a military position there.
41 Palestinians have been killed and several wounded in Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip since dawn today, Al Jazeera reports.
Israel’s renewed assault on the enclave since March 18 comes as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at forcing Hamas to renegotiate the ceasefire deal agreed upon in January.
Hamas, however, has insisted on a return to the previously agreed deal and has offered to free all the captives at once in return for a permanent ceasefire.
A Gaza family’s open admission this week that they killed an officer from the Hamas-run police force after they said a relative was shot dead has added to signs of popular dissent against the group after 18 months of conflict with Israel, Reuters reports.
It drew a warning from the interior ministry of the enclave governed by Hamas that actions that undermined public order would not be tolerated.
Hundreds of Palestinians also rallied in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, chanting “Hamas out” and “Enough death” in renewed protests against the faction.
Residents were angered by new Israeli military evacuation orders, which the military said followed rocket salvoes by fighters from the area.
They may have been emboldened to take the streets by a sharply reduced presence of Hamas police and security forces in the past weeks since Israel’s large-scale attacks have resumed, Reuters added.
At least three Palestinians were killed following an Israeli fighter jet strike on a house in Gaza’s Shujayea neighbourhood in the north of the Palestinian enclave, Al Jazeera reports.
An Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent in Gaza reported that three Palestinians were killed in that attack, while at least 15 more have been injured.
In total, overnight Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed at least 24 Palestinians, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
At its 58th session, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and the commitment to ensuring accountability and justice. The resolution was supported by 27 countries, opposed by four, Wafareports.
The resolution called for an end to the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territory, in accordance with the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, the lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip, condemning Israel, the occupying power, for violating the ceasefire agreement.
The resolution also affirmed the illegality of the forced displacement of Palestinians and the use of starvation as a tool of war. It emphasised the need to achieve justice and accountability, calling on the international community to uphold its responsibilities to comply with and respect international law, including by halting arms trade with the occupying power.
The resolution demanded that the occupying power allow the Fact-Finding Mission to enter the occupied Palestinian territory so that it can carry out its mandate.
Turkiye has slammed Israel over its announcement of a major expansion to its military operation in Gaza, saying the move marked a manifestation of what it called Israel’s illegal approach detached from the pursuit of peace, Reuters reports.
In a statement, Turkiye’s foreign ministry said statements on expanding operations in Gaza and settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank marked “yet another demonstration of Israel’s blatant disregard for international law and its complete detachment from the pursuit of peace”.
It called on the international community to take a stance to protect holy sites, prevent provocations and halt Israel’s efforts to expand its territory through occupation.
Hamas has rejected the latest Israeli proposal on a Gaza truce, two officials from the movement tell AFP.
“Hamas has decided not to follow up on the latest Israeli proposal presented through the mediators” said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.
They accused Israel of “blocking a proposal from Egypt and Qatar and trying to derail any agreement”.
Confirming the Palestinian movement’s refusal to negotiate based on the latest Israeli proposal, the second Hamas official called on “the mediators and the international community to force [Israel] to commit to the mediators’ proposal”.
Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), has said Israel is waging its war on Gaza “without limits”, Al Jazeera reports.
Whittall told reporters that 64 per cent of Gaza’s territory was now inaccessible to Palestinians, and there is no safety for the civilian population.
“Nowhere and no one is safe in Gaza,” Whittall was quoted as saying.
“My colleagues tell me that they just want to die with their families. Their worst fear is to die alone,” he said.
There are no longer humanitarian solutions to the crisis in Gaza, which needs “political action”. “I believe that this needs to start with accountability,” he added.
People mourn Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip on April 2, 2025. — Reuters/Mahmoud Issa
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Hungary, as both he and the Hungarian government defy an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant seeking his arrest over alleged war crimes in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.
“We welcome the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to Budapest!” Hungary’s Defence Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky wrote on Facebook, alongside several photos of Netanyahu being received on a red carpet by the minister and a military honour guard.
Netanyahu’s invitation to Hungary by Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been slammed by Amnesty International, who said the move was a “cynical effort to undermine the ICC”.
Hungary is a party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC and has a legal obligation to detain Netanyahu on behalf of the court.
The interior ministry in Gaza says an Israeli air raid in Deir el-Balah killed two officers and injured five others.
The bombing comes days after suspected criminals killed a police officer in the same area.
“As it mourns the police martyrs who were targeted by the Israeli occupation while carrying out their duty of ensuring security and serving citizens, the interior ministry stresses that the foals of the Israeli occupation overlap with the goal of troublemakers and outlaws,” the ministry said in a statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the military is “dissecting” Gaza and “seizing territory” to retrieve hostages held in the Palestinian enclave, AFP reports.
The military is “dissecting the (Gaza) Strip and increasing the pressure step by step so that (Hamas) will return our hostages”, Netanyahu said in a statement, adding that Israel “is seizing territory, striking terrorists, and destroying infrastructure”.
The UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel’s renewed offensive in Gaza and demanded the country uphold its responsibility to “prevent genocide” in the Palestinian territory, AFP reports.
The United Nations’ top rights body overwhelmingly adopted a resolution putting forth a list of demands to Israel, including calling on it to “lift its illegal blockade” on Gaza.
The text, adopted with 27 of the council’s 47 members voting in favour, four against and 16 abstaining, deplored “the violation by Israel of the ceasefire agreement”.
The resolution, put forward by most members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, demanded “unimpeded humanitarian assistance and the urgent restoration of basic necessities” to Gaza.
It slammed “the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”, and called on all countries “to take immediate action to prevent the continued forcible transfer of Palestinians within or from the Gaza Strip”.
