Four Gaza patients dead as oxygen cut off during Israel raid on Nasser hospital, doctors say - latest

Israel on Thursday urged the United Nations’ highest court to reject an urgent South African request to consider whether Israel’s military operations targeting the southern Gaza city of Rafah breach provisional orders the court handed down last month in a case alleging genocide.

South Africa asked the International Court of Justice to decide whether Israel’s strikes on Rafah, and its intention to launch a ground offensive on the city where 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering, breaches both the U.N. Genocide Convention and preliminary orders handed down by the court last month in a case accusing Israel of genocide.

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The families of two Palestinian-American teenagers killed in separate but eerily similar incidents in the West Bank say investigators from the American Embassy have visited their homes to look into the shootings.

The launch of American probes into the killings of Mohammad Khdour and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar reflects what appears to be a lack of confidence in the Israeli justice system to properly investigate the cases. Rights groups have long said that Israeli investigations into killings of Palestinians rarely lead to prosecutions, and the State Department has previously called for an “expeditious and thorough” Israeli investigation into Abdel Jabbar’s killing.

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In a phone call Thursday, President Joe Biden again cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against moving forward with a military operation in Rafah without a “credible and executable plan” to protect civilians.

Early the next day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to reject “international dictates” on a long-term resolution of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.

Each year as spring approaches, wildflowers erupt across Israel, a splash of color before the punishing Middle Eastern summer. Nowhere is the show more dramatic than in southern Israel, near Gaza, where brilliant red anemones burst forth with such intensity that rolling hills seem to be covered in red carpets.

Along the Gaza border, the flowers, which look like poppies, have been crowned with their own festival, Darom Adom, or Scarlet South. It’s been a major economic engine and source of local pride for nearly two decades, bringing hundreds of thousands to a little-visited and conflict-scarred part of Israel.

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The storming by Israeli troops of southern Gaza‘s main hospital brought chaos to hundreds of staff and patients inside, as health officials said four people in intensive care died after their oxygen cut off.

Troops were searching the facility, where the military said it believes the remains of hostages abducted by Hamas might be located.

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Real and vile antisemitism is rife, and there are bigots who will believe any nutjob conspiracy theory about Israel. Condemn them, suspend them, marginalise them, writes Alan Rusbridger.

But can’t we also acknowledge that the current Israeli government is one which includes criminals, extremists and despots who have no interest in a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine question?

Read Alan’s piece in full here:

The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees said on Friday that a spillover of refugees from Gaza’s Rafah into Egypt’s Sinai would be a disaster.

“It would be a disaster for the Palestinians ... a disaster for Egypt and a disaster for the future of peace,” Filippo Grandi told Reuters.

When asked whether Egyptian authorities had contacted the UNHCR about possible contingency plans he said: “The Egyptians said that people should be assisted inside Gaza and we are working on that.”

Their scissors move quickly, shearing pieces of white cloth to be stitched together with cotton pads and taken to market in battered cardboard boxes.

Before the day is done, the Palestinian seamstresses will have sewn 500 diapers and distributed them to war-weary parents in Gaza for about $4 per package of eight, half of what mass-produced disposable diapers cost in the besieged enclave.

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UN aid chief Martin Griffiths on Thursday said it was an “illusion” to think people in Gaza could evacuate to a safe place and warned of the possibility of Palestinians spilling into Egypt if Israel launches a military operation in Rafah.

He called this scenario “a sort of Egyptian nightmare”.