Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 208

The United States military has so far constructed over 50 per cent of a maritime pier that will eventually be placed off the coast of Gaza to speed the flow of humanitarian aid into the enclave, the Pentagon said according to Reuters.

“As of today, we are over 50pc complete on setting up the pier,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.

Singh said that the pier had several different components.

“The floating pier has been completely constructed and set up. The causeway is in progress,” she added.

Colombia president Gustavo Petro said he will break diplomatic relations with Israel over its actions in Gaza, Reuters reports.

Petro has already heavily criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and requested to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Palestine’s ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour has called on countries that have not recognised Palestine as a state to do so now, Al Jazeera reports.

“For those who have not yet recognised a State of Palestine, we say there are no grounds for further delay. Those who want to destroy a Palestinian state and with it any chance for peace are not waiting,” Mansour said during a speech at UN headquarters in New York.

“If you wonder if you are on the right side of history, ask yourselves one question: ‘Is what I’m doing advocating freedom and peace or enabling continued oppression and conflict?’ You should ask yourself that question.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured a key Gaza border crossing for a first-hand look at aid shipments, after calling on Israel to do more to help the territory, AFP reports.

Blinken travelled to Kerem Shalom, an Israeli entry point into Gaza a few kilometres from the southern flashpoint city of Rafah, where he saw dozens of trucks waiting to enter — as well as several Israeli military tanks parked nearby, according to an AFP journalist.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called on Hamas to accept a “very strong” ceasefire-for-hostages offer as he vowed to put a priority on families seeking to reunite with loved ones, AFP reports.

In rare scenes for the top US diplomat, who has faced furore at home and abroad over President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in its campaign against Hamas, Blinken was greeted outside his Tel Aviv hotel by Israelis waving US flags and chanting, “Thank you, Biden! Thank you, Blinken!”

Blinken, who also met privately with hostage families, told them that freeing the hostages seized on October 7 was “at the heart of everything we’re trying to do”.

“There is a very strong proposal on the table right now. Hamas needs to say yes, and needs to get this done,” Blinken told the protesters, many of whom chanted for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt the fighting.

“We will not rest until everyone — men, women, soldier, civilian, young, old — is back home,” he said.

Egypt’s top diplomat Sameh Shoukry has said in a meeting with his French counterpart that parties “must show the necessary flexibility” to achieve a truce in Gaza “that stops the bloodshed of Palestinians”, AFP reports.

In a “quick visit” by French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne in Cairo, the pair “exchanged assessments on the ongoing truce negotiations between Hamas and Israel”, according to the Egyptian foreign ministry.

Israel has reopened the sole crossing on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, allowing aid trucks to pass through the Erez checkpoint following US demands to do more to address the growing humanitarian crisis, Reuters reports.

The Israeli government opened the crossing point on the day of a visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called for more humanitarian aid deliveries into the territory.

The UN has said Gaza is filled with more debris and rubble than Ukraine, with the mammoth task of clearing it made all the more costly and dangerous by the sheer amount of asbestos and unexploded ordnance, AFP reports.

Six months into the fighting between Israel and Hamas, the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) estimated the amount of debris in the Gaza Strip at 37 million tonnes in mid-April, or 300 kilogrammes per square metre.

“Gaza has more rubble than Ukraine, and to put that in perspective, the Ukrainian front line is 600 miles (nearly 1,000km) long, and Gaza is 25 miles (40km) long,” said Mungo Birch, head of the UNMAS programme in the Palestinian territories.

But the volume of rubble is not the only problem, said UNMAS.

“This rubble is likely heavily contaminated with UXO (unexploded ordnance), but its clearance will be further complicated by other hazards in the rubble,” Birch told journalists in Geneva.

“There’s estimated to be over 800,000 tonnes of asbestos, for instance, alone in the Gaza rubble.”

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Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that efforts to forge a normalisation of ties between Israel and Arab countries will not resolve the crisis in the Middle East, AFP reports.

“Some people think that by forcing neighbouring countries to normalise their ties [with Israel] the problem will be solved,” said Khamenei. “They are wrong.”

“Palestine should be returned to them (Palestinians),” said Khamenei. “They should form their own regime, their own system, then that system should decide how to deal with the Zionists. “

A Hamas official has said the group will respond to an Israeli truce proposal for Gaza “within a very short period”, stressing that any ceasefire needs to be permanent.

Hamas is considering a plan for a 40-day ceasefire and the exchange of scores of hostages for larger numbers of Palestinian prisoners.

Suhail al-Hindi, a senior Hamas official, told AFP the group would “deliver its response clearly within a very short period”, although he would not say precisely when that was expected to happen.

Speaking to AFP by phone from an undisclosed location, he said it was premature to say whether the Hamas envoys, who have returned from talks in Cairo to their base in Qatar, felt any progress was made.

He stressed the aim was “to reach an end to this war”.

Jordan’s foreign ministry has said some Israeli settlers attacked two of its humanitarian aid convoys as they made their way toward the Gaza Strip, Reuters reports.

Both convoys continued on their way and managed to reach their destination in Israeli-besieged Gaza, the ministry said in a statement.

“Two Jordanian aid convoys carrying food, flour and other humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip were attacked by settlers,” the ministry said, without giving details of the incident.

Honenu, an Israeli legal aid agency, said in a statement that four men who “blocked aid trucks [going] to Gaza” near the large West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim had been arrested by Israeli police.

One of the convoys was bound for the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza and the other for the Erez crossing, the Jordanian foreign ministry said.

A group of workers at Alphabet Inc’s Google have filed a complaint with a US labour board claiming the tech company unlawfully fired about 50 employees for protesting its cloud contract with the Israeli government, Reuters reports.

The single-page complaint filed late on Monday with the US National Labour Relations Board alleges that by firing the workers, Google interfered with their rights under US labour law to advocate for better working conditions.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reiterated US opposition to an Israeli assault on the crowded Gaza city of Rafah in talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed to press ahead, AFP reports quoting a US official.

Blinken “reiterated the United States’ clear position on Rafah”, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said, two days after Blinken again voiced opposition to an assault over concerns for the safety of civilians sheltering in the southern Gaza city.

A US vascular surgeon who left Gaza after a stint as a volunteer said nothing had prepared him for the scale of injuries he had faced there, Reuters reports.

Dozens of patients a day. Most of them young. Most facing complicated injuries caused by shrapnel. Most ending up with amputations.

“Vascular surgery is really a disease for older patients and I would say I had never operated on anybody less than 16, and that was the majority of patients that we did this time around,” Shariq Sayeed, from Atlanta, Georgia, told Reuters in Cairo.

“Most were patients 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 years of age. Mostly shrapnel wounds, and that was something I have never dealt with, that was something new.” In his stint at the European Hospital in Gaza, Sayeed said his team would deal with 40-60 patients a day. The vast majority were amputation cases.

“And unfortunately there is a very high incidence of infection as well so once you have an amputation that doesn’t heal, you end of getting a higher amputation,” he said.

Around 70 per cent of the surgeries he performed were on injuries caused by shrapnel, the rest mostly from blast injuries and collapsing buildings. according to Reuters.

The Israeli military has said that is has carried out attacks on Hezbollah targets in the Khiam and Kfar Kila areas of southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera reports.

Posting on X, it added that “terrorist infrastructure” was also struck in the Layda, Al Adisa and Meiss el-Jabal areas of southern Lebanon.

A British police officer has been charged with a terrorism offence for allegedly publishing an image in support of Hamas, a group banned in Britain as a terrorist organisation, police have said, Reuters reports.

Mohammed Adil, 26, from Bradford in northern England, was arrested last November and charged following an investigation by British counter-terrorism officers, Counter Terrorism Policing North East said in a statement.

The police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), said the inquiries had focused on messages shared on WhatsApp which had concluded the case should be referred to prosecutors.

“On Monday, PC Mohammed Adil, 26, was charged with two counts of publishing an image in support of a proscribed organisation, specifically Hamas, contrary to section 13 of the Terrorism Act,” the IOPC statement said.

“The offences are alleged to have taken place in October and November 2023.”

Adil, a police constable, has been suspended from his job with West Yorkshire Police and is due to appear before London Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.

Israeli Army Radio has reported that the military – in preparation for its ground assault on Rafah – will announce a “new safe zone” in central Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

In a brief post on social media, the army’s GLZ Radio said the zone is “part of preparations for the evacuation of the population from Rafah” and will be located north of Gaza’s central refugee camps.

Israeli attacks on Rafah have intensified in recent weeks and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated that Rafah will be invaded with or without a ceasefire agreement from Hamas.

Residents of Rafah and elsewhere in the Gaza Strip have long said there are no “safe zones” anywhere in the conflict-torn territory.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog told journalists during a press briefing with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv that Israel’s “allies and friends” should reject efforts to “use the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israel”, Al Jazeera reports.

Herzog described the ICC’s reported investigation into Israeli leaders as a “clear and present danger to all democracies and to free and peace-loving nations”.

Several senior Israeli officials have expressed concern in recent days that the ICC is investigating the country’s operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank – amid reports the court could issue warrants for the arrest of Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders.

Israel’s Minister of Settlements and National Missions Orit Strock has said Netanyahu’s administration “has no right to exist” due to the “terrible” captive deal it is negotiating with Hamas, Al Jazeera reports.

“[We have] soldiers who left everything behind and went out to fight for goals that the government defined, and we throw it in the trash to save 22 people or 33 or I don’t know how many,” she told Army Radio.

The terms of the deal have not been made public but Israeli media have reported that Israel is seeking the return of 33 captives in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

At least 34,568 Palestinians have been killed and 77,765 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since Oct 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement, Reuters reports.

France’s foreign minister will travel to Cairo in an unscheduled stop during a Middle East tour as efforts to secure a truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza reach a critical point, a French diplomatic source said, Reuters reports.

Diplomatic efforts towards securing a ceasefire were intensifying following a renewed push led by Egypt to revive stalled negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

“The surprise visit of the minister is in the context of Egypt’s efforts to free hostages and achieve a truce in Gaza,” the source said.

France has three nationals still held hostage by Hamas after the group’s assault on Israel in October.

Foreign minister Stephane Sejourne’s trip to Egypt follows stopovers in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Israel. He will likely want to assess whether those three hostages could be released and how close a deal actually is.

Dozens of helmeted police flooded Columbia University’s campus in the heart of New York City to evict a building occupied by pro-Palestinian student protesters and detain demonstrators, AFP reports.

Police climbed into Hamilton Hall via a second floor window they reached from a laddered truck, before leading handcuffed students out of the building into police vans.

The hall had been occupied at dawn by demonstrators who vowed they would fight any eviction, as they protested the soaring death toll from Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The action came as university administrators around the United States have struggled for weeks to contain pro-Palestinian demonstrations on dozens of campuses.