20 m. ago Bezalel Smotrich approves 3,000 new housing units in controversial West Bank settlement, reports say – Middle East crisis live

Israel’s far-right finance minister approves tenders for housing which international community says would split West Bank in half, reports Times of IsraelThe health ministry in Gaza has just issued a statement, saying four more people have died from famine and malnutrition in the past 24 hours.This brings the total to 239 since the start of the war, including 106 children, according to the health ministry. Continue reading...

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41 h. ago Israel intensifies bombing of Gaza, killing 89 Palestinians in 24 hours

At least 15 people queueing for food among the deaths, and five people reported to have died from starvationIsrael has stepped up bombing Gaza, killing at least 89 Palestinians in 24 hours, including at least 15 people queueing for food, despite global outcry over the deaths of six journalists in the territory the previous day.Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City had intensified in the three days after Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved plans to expand the war in the territory. Continue reading...

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42 h. ago Palestinian ambassador calls for media to enter Gaza hours before Al Jazeera reporters killed

Palestine’s UN ambassador invited the Security Council to “take 100 journalists” into Gaza to “see exactly what is happening there” hours before five reporters from Al Jazeera were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

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42 h. ago Killing Palestinian journalists in Gaza renders the world blind

As Palestinian journalists are targeted in Gaza, chief international correspondent Bel Trew, who has reported from the enclave multiple times, asks why Israel is so afraid of scrutiny

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59 h. ago Gaza latest: Netanyahu orders military to speed up occupation plan as funeral held for five journalists killed

Gaza residents reported heavy shelling east of Gaza City as Israel faces criticism for the death of six journalists

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63 h. ago ‘It was horrific’: Witnesses tell how Israeli missiles tore through journalists’ tent in Gaza City

Anas Al-Sharif, 28, one of the news channel’s most prominent voices in Gaza, was killed alongside reporter Mohammed Qreiqeh, and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa

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64 h. ago ‘It was horrific’: Witnesses tell how missiles tore through journalists’ tent in Gaza City

Anas Al-Sharif, 28, one of the news channel’s most prominent voices in Gaza, was killed alongside reporter Mohammed Qreiqeh, and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa

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67 h. ago ‘If these words reach you Israel has succeeded in killing me’: the last words of a journalist killed in Gaza

Anas al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera reporter, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on Sunday night. This is the message he had prepared for his family, and his call for the world not to forget Gaza• Report: Funeral held for five journalists killed in strikeThe following statement was posthumously published on Anas al-Sharif’s X account, after an attack on a tent for journalists near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Seven people in total were killed including al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, according to Al Jazeera.This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

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3 d. ago My years reporting on Gaza broke me down. Why did it take so long for the world to become outraged? | Phoebe Greenwood

Between 2010 and 2013, I was on the ground capturing Israel’s attacks on Palestine. Few wanted to see itWhen I moved to Jerusalem in 2010, the foreign correspondents there offered me some unsettling advice: “The first year here you’ll hate the Israeli government, the second year the Palestinian leadership, by the third you’ll hate yourself.” It’s best to leave before four, I was told, in the interest of sanity. I nodded along thinking how sadly cynical they were. I would do better than that, I told myself. I did not.I lasted a little under four years in Israel and Palestine. In that time, I reported on forced displacement and punitive bureaucracy (Israel’s occupation is expanded through denied permits, home demolitions and revoked ID cards). I wrote about child killings, war crimes and terrorism (perpetrated by both sides). I tried to explain as best I could the annexation of the West Bank and the collective punishment of two million people in Gaza without using forbidden phrases su...

Politics

3 d. ago Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza deepens rift between government and IDF | Lorenzo Tondo

Israelis are united behind the army, and a clash with the military could have irreparable consequences for the administrationIsrael’s decision to approve a plan to occupy the Gaza Strip has reportedly deepened tensions between the government and the country’s military leadership, while also exposing fresh fractures within the army’s senior ranks and straining relations with reservists summoned for what could become the most dangerous phase of the war.According to Israeli media reports, a bruising week of leaks and public recriminations has laid bare the rift between Israel’s political leaders and its military high command. Continue reading...

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4 d. ago Joe Biden is complicit in Gaza’s starvation. Blood is on his hands | Mohamad Bazzi

At several points during his presidency, Biden could have stopped starvation from spreading in Gaza. He didn’t do thatIn March 2024, the global authority on food security warned that Palestinians were experiencing “catastrophic levels of hunger”, and famine was imminent in northern Gaza as Israel continued its siege of the territory. That report was one of the most direct warnings from the UN and international relief groups, which had been raising alarms about the potential for widespread starvation in Gaza since December 2023.Joe Biden was in the White House at the time, and his administration not only failed to heed those repeated warnings, but it worked to undermine UN agencies and humanitarian groups that tried to focus attention on Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. Today, Donald Trump and his administration are deeply complicit in the human-made famine unfolding in Gaza, but it’s important to remember that US complicity predates Trump – and it’s another sta...

Politics

6 d. ago Middle East crisis live: Israel security cabinet approves plan to take over Gaza City amid reports of disagreements with military

The announcement comes after Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel intended to take full control of Gaza and hand over the territory’s governance to friendly Arab forcesThe Axios reporter Barak Ravid has cited an Israeli official as saying Israel’s occupation of Gaza City is to involve besieging Hamas fighters there while carrying out a ground offensive.Ravid’s post on X says:Senior Israeli official tells me: The operation that the IDF is currently preparing for is only in Gaza City. The goal is to evacuate all Palestinian civilians from Gaza City to the central camps and other areas by October 7. A siege will be imposed on the Hamas militants who remain in Gaza City, and at the same time, a ground offensive will be carried out in Gaza City. The Prime Minister and the Defense Minister have been authorized to approve the IDF’s final operational plan1. Disarming Hamas of its weapons.2. Return of all hostages – both the living and the deceased. Continue reading...

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6 d. ago The Latest: Netanyahu facing opposition to reported plan for reoccupation of Gaza

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting with top advisers to discuss Israel's strategy in Gaza after ceasefire talks broke down last month

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8 d. ago Vulture by Phoebe Greenwood review – a caustic satire on war reporting in the Middle East

A journalist pursues headline-making scoops whatever the cost to those in the conflict zone in this astute and darkly humorous debut novel by a former foreign correspondent‘Middle East on Fire: Israel positions tanks on Gaza border.” Journalist Phoebe Greenwood’s debut novel follows Sara Byrne, a freelance journalist in Gaza in 2012, who is reporting for a “pretty rightwing” British newspaper. Staying at the Beach Hotel, which is occupied exclusively by “middle-aged foreign correspondents”, she jostles with other reporters for stories while maintaining less-than-cordial relations with her fixer, Nasser. It could almost be a comedy of manners, with sketches of staff members and scenes from the hotel lobby. But it isn’t because, as the hotel owner puts it, “Gaza is a prison in non-stop war”.Vulture is a caustic study of what it means to report from a conflict, and particularly relevant to the current moment. It’s a knowing portrait by Greenwood, who was a freelance reporter in Je...

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9 d. ago Gaza latest: Netanyahu to seek cabinet backing for full Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, say reports

Netanyahu said Israel was ‘committing to free Gaza from the tyranny of these terrorists’

Politics

3 w. ago Two days less holiday? France is up in arms but my sympathy is limited

This small cutback is hardly a draconian austerity purge for a country that is broke. But the howls of outrage show a rational debate is unlikelyFrance is skint, but the French are in denial. To judge by the howls of outrage from the left and the hard right of the French political spectrum, you would think the prime minister, François Bayrou, had just taken a Javier Milei-style chainsaw to public services, announced Doge-style mass layoffs or imposed swingeing pay cuts.But it was Bayrou’s suggestion that the French should give up two of their 11 cherished public holidays – Easter Monday and 8 May, the anniversary of the end of the second world war in Europe – and work instead to increase economic output and hence government revenue that provoked the anger.Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Pope condemns Gaza war’s ‘barbarity’ as 85 reported killed while waiting for food

Pontiff also speaks of anguish over Israeli strike on territory’s only Catholic church, which killed three people Pope Leo XIV has condemned the “barbarity” of the war in Gaza and the “indiscriminate use of force” as Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 85 Palestinians had been killed queueing for food.The ministry said on Sunday that the victims had been killed in different locations, mostly in northern Gaza. Continue reading...

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3 w. ago Pope condemns Gaza war’s ‘barbarity’ as 93 reported killed by Israeli fire while waiting for food

Israeli forces open fire on hungry Palestinians near Gaza City in one of bloodiest incidents involving aid seekersPope Leo XIV has condemned the “barbarity” of the war in Gaza and the “indiscriminate use of force” as Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 93 Palestinians had been killed queueing for food and Israel issued fresh evacuation orders for areas packed with displaced people.Gaza’s health ministry said scores were killed by Israeli fire while waiting for UN aid trucks entering through the northern Zikim crossing with Israel. It was one of the highest reported death tolls among repeated recent cases in which aid seekers have been killed by Israeli fire. Continue reading...

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3 w. ago Pope Leo XIV condemns ‘barbarity’ of Gaza war as dozens reported killed queuing for aid

At least 73 Palestinians were killed queuing for aid on Sunday, according to hospitals and witnesses

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3 w. ago Pope condemns Gaza war’s ‘barbarity’ as 73 reported killed while waiting for food

Pontiff also speaks of anguish over Israeli strike on territory’s only Catholic church, which killed three peoplePope Leo XIV has condemned the “barbarity” of the war in Gaza and the “indiscriminate use of force” as Gaza’s health ministry said at least 73 Palestinians had been killed queueing for food.The Hamas-run ministry said on Sunday that the victims had been killed in different locations, mostly in northern Gaza. Continue reading...

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