Israel orders evacuation of former humanitarian safe zone in Gaza
The Israeli army ordered a fresh evacuation of areas in southern and central Gaza previously designated as a humanitarian safe zone on Friday, saying the areas had been used by Hamas as a base for firing mortars and rockets towards Israel.
It said warning flyers and text messages had been sent out in the area north of the southern city of Khan Younis and in the eastern part of Deir Al-Balah, where tens of thousands of people have sought shelter from fighting in other parts of Gaza.
“The advance warning to civilians is being issued in order to mitigate harm to the civilian population and to enable civilians to move away from the combat zone,” the military said in a statement seen by Reuters.
Earlier the military said it had hit an area in Khan Younis from where rockets were fired towards the community of Kissufim on Thursday, finding weapons including shoulder-fired missiles and explosives.
Key events
When Vice President Kamala Harris flies to Chicago next week to accept her party’s nomination for the presidency, she will be met head-on with voters protesting one of her thorniest electoral issues: the Biden administration’s aid to Israel.
A coalition of some 200 social justice organizations is going forward with their plan to march at the Democratic National Convention on Monday. Pro-Palestinian activists resent Biden’s administration for funding Israel during its war against Hamas.
Harris has surged in opinion polls since Biden’s July 21 withdrawal from the race. Hatem Abudayyeh, spokesperson for the March on the DNC coalition, said dozens of coalition group leaders met after Biden ended his campaign and discussed if they should change tack if Harris became the nominee.
“There was absolute consensus,” he recalled. “She represents the policies of the administration and it’s full steam ahead.”
Concerns over a wider conflict in the Middle East have prompted international airlines to suspend flights to the region or to avoid affected air space.
Some of the airlines that have adjusted services to and from the region include Aegean Airlines. The Greek airline cancelled all flights to and from Beirut, Amman and Tel Aviv until August 19. Algerian airline Air Algerie has also temporarily suspended flights to and from Lebanon until further notice.
Latvia’s airBaltic cancelled all flights to and from Tel Aviv until August 18, while Indian flag carrier Air India suspended scheduled flights to and from Tel Aviv until further notice.
Air France-KLM cancelled all flights to and from Tel Aviv until Oct. 26, but resumed service between Paris and Beirut on August 15 after a two-week suspension. The Franco-Dutch group’s low-cost unit Transavia cancelled flights to and from Tel Aviv until March 31, 2025, and flights to Amman until November 3.
To Australia now and a row between an independent MP and the leader of the opposition.
Liberal party leader Peter Dutton has insisted he is not racist after Zali Steggall, the independent MP, defended calling Dutton so in parliament and accused him of fuelling division with his political attacks over visa-holders from Gaza.
Dutton rejected Steggall’s assertion – which the speaker forced the member for Warringah to withdraw after she levelled it on Thursday – and said she was the one who was divisive.
“I’m not a racist, and I’m not going to be standing here as a punching bag for people like Zali Steggall,” Dutton told Nine’s Today Show on Friday. “I actually think, ironically, that them calling out people unnecessarily and unrealistically and unjustly as racists, they’re actually fuelling tensions.”
Read our full report here:
Peter Kuras
Is it legal to say the words “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in Germany? The answer appears to be yes: you can shout them from the rooftops in German, English, Arabic or Hebrew, so long as a court accepts that you are not doing so to indicate support for Hamas or its murderous assault of 7 October.
This distinction came to bear on the activist Ava Moayeri last week, when she was convicted of “condoning a crime” for leading a chant of the slogan at a Berlin rally on 11 October.
Peter Kuras explains how the decision has widened a rift in German society:
Cars and houses burn after Israeli settlers attack West Bank village
Dozens of Israeli settlers, some wearing masks, attacked a Palestinian village near the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, burning cars and killing at least one person.
The Palestinian health ministry said one Palestinian was killed and another was critically wounded after Israeli settlers opened fire during the attack in the village of Jit. It is the latest in a series of attacks by violent settlers in the West Bank.
The Israeli military said police and army units had intervened and arrested one Israeli. It condemned the attack, which it said diverted security forces from other responsibilities
Watch our video here:
Norway will close its representative office in the Palestinian territories “until further notice” following a decision by Israel to revoke the accreditation of Norwegian diplomats working there, the foreign minister said Friday.
Norway considers the early August decision by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to be “extreme and unreasonable,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said as he announced the closure of the Representative Office in the West Bank town of Al Ram, nearly 30 years after it opened in 1995.
“This decision seeks to target the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority and all those who defend international law, the two-state solution and the Palestinians’ legitimate right to self-determination,” Barth Eide said. Norway “will do our utmost to ensure that this does not affect our work for Palestine and for a viable Palestinian state.”
In May, Norway – together with Spain and Ireland – announced they would recognize a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has called “the armed collective attack” by settlers on the village of Jit in the occupied West Bank “organised state terrorism” in a statement.
The ministry condemned the attack committed by “the terrorist settler gangs” on the village located in the east of the city of Qalqilya. The Palestinian health ministry said one Palestinian was killed and another critically wounded by Israeli settlers’ gunfire during the attack in the village of Jit, the latest in a series of attacks by violent settlers in the West Bank.
“We demand the imposition of deterrent sanctions on the racist colonial system, the dismantling of the terrorist settler militias, and the prosecution of their members,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry statement said.
Israel orders evacuation of former humanitarian safe zone in Gaza
The Israeli army ordered a fresh evacuation of areas in southern and central Gaza previously designated as a humanitarian safe zone on Friday, saying the areas had been used by Hamas as a base for firing mortars and rockets towards Israel.
It said warning flyers and text messages had been sent out in the area north of the southern city of Khan Younis and in the eastern part of Deir Al-Balah, where tens of thousands of people have sought shelter from fighting in other parts of Gaza.
“The advance warning to civilians is being issued in order to mitigate harm to the civilian population and to enable civilians to move away from the combat zone,” the military said in a statement seen by Reuters.
Earlier the military said it had hit an area in Khan Younis from where rockets were fired towards the community of Kissufim on Thursday, finding weapons including shoulder-fired missiles and explosives.
As they struggled to recover bodies from the ruins of yet another air strike on Thursday, Palestinians in north Gaza questioned why, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s team was in Qatar.
“Why did Netanyahu send a delegation to the talks while we are being killed here?” in Jabalia, Mohammed al-Balwi said as rescuers around him pulled bodies from the concrete wreckage.
They had found “limbs on the ground”, he told AFP.
Fears of a wider Middle East war have soared since the July 31 killing of Hamas political leader and truce negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran and its allied groups in the region blamed Israel and vowed revenge.
David Lammy and French minister to hold joint meeting with Israeli ministers
Foreign Secretary David Lammy is to take part in intensified efforts for international diplomacy to prevent the war in Gaza from spreading into a wider regional conflict today, with he and the French foreign minister making a joint trip to Israel while internationally mediated cease-fire talks in Qatar were expected to enter their second day.
The new push for an end to the Israel-Hamas war came as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza climbed past 40,000, according to Gaza health authorities, and fears remained high that Iran and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon would attack Israel in retaliation for the killings of top militant leaders.
“This is a dangerous moment for the Middle East,” Lammy said. “The risk of the situation spiraling out of control is rising. Any Iranian attack would have devastating consequences for the region.”
Lammy and French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné were expected hold a joint meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.
A Jordanian citizen residing in Orlando, Florida, was charged with threatening to use explosives and destruction of an energy facility after threats against businesses for their perceived support of Israel, the U.S. Justice Department said.
Incidents of hate against Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians and Israelis in the U.S. have risen since Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. Israel subsequently launched its now more than 10-month old military assault on Hamas-governed Gaza that has caused a humanitarian crisis.
“We allege that the defendant threatened to carry out hate-fueled mass violence in our country, motivated in part by a desire to target businesses for their perceived support of Israel,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Thursday.
A 43-year-old man has been arrested and FBI Director Christopher Wray added that “the defendant allegedly attacked a power facility and threatened local businesses, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.”
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
Negotiators were set to meet again in the Qatari capital Doha on Friday in an effort to hammer out a Gaza ceasefire agreement. A US official briefed on the discussions in Doha, who declined to be identified, told Reuters that Thursday’s talks were “constructive.”
“This is vital work. The remaining obstacles can be overcome, and we must bring this process to a close,” US national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House.
In a statement issued late on Thursday, Hamas politburo member Hossam Badran said Israel’s continuing operations in Gaza were an obstacle to progress on a ceasefire. Hamas officials did not join Thursday’s talks.
Gaza’s health ministry said 40,005 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza after the 7 October attack by Hamas last year. In an update on Thursday, the ministry said 92,401 Palestinians had been injured. The majority of casualties are civilians, though Gaza’s health ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures.
The UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said the death toll in Gaza passing 40,000 is a “grim milestone”. Türk accused the Israeli army to repeatedly failing to “comply with the rules of war”. The numbers do not necessarily reflect all victims as many are still missing under the rubble, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The international charity ActionAid said it was “outraged and heartbroken” following the news that more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s offensive. It accused “most governments across the world” of having “refused to do the bare minimum to protect civilian life”, adding that it is “to our collective shame”.
Dozens of Israeli settlers, some wearing masks, attacked a Palestinian village near the city of Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank, burning cars and killing at least one person. The Palestinian health ministry said one Palestinian was killed and another critically wounded by Israeli settlers’ gunfire during the attack in the village of Jit, the latest in a series of attacks by violent settlers in the West Bank.
The Israeli military said police and army units intervened and arrested one Israeli. It condemned the attack, which it said diverted security forces from other responsibilities. It said it was examining reports about the death of the Palestinian. The office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, issued a statement saying he viewed the attack with “utmost severity”. “Those responsible for any offence will be apprehended and tried,” it said.
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