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SvennoJ 12 hours ago
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Main events on March 11

  • Palestinians in Gaza mourned the six people killed in Israel’s ongoing attacks on the territory as the Health Ministry identified one of another four people killed in a separate Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank as a 58-year-old woman.
  • The Palestinian Islamic Jihad welcomed the Houthis’ decision to resume attacks on Red Sea shipping after Israel ignored the Yemeni rebel group’s ultimatum to end the blockade on Gaza within four days.
  • The United Nations said relief agencies in Gaza are rationing all aid, including fuel, as Doctors Without Borders (MSF) slammed the Israeli blockade as “outrageous” and said that “humanitarian aid should never be used as a bargaining chip in war”.
  • Steve Witkoff, the US’s Middle East envoy, is in the Qatari capital, Doha, according to media reports, as Hamas announced the start of a new round of negotiations on the Gaza ceasefire and captives exchanges deal.
  • Israel’s Defence Minister Gideon Saar said Israeli troops will remain in the areas that they had occupied in the Syrian Golan Heights, following Bashar al-Assad’s fall, for an “unlimited period”.
  • Israel returned five Lebanese citizens it took captive as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said his country has agreed to hold talks, mediated by France and the US, to demarcate the Israeli border with Lebanon.


Houthis say ‘any Israeli vessel’ in waters off Yemen again a target

The Yemeni rebel group is warning shippers that “any Israeli vessel” travelling through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is now a target.

The statement follows a four-day deadline set by the rebels for Israel to resume aid shipments into Gaza.

“We hope it is understood that the actions taken by the [Houthi military] … stem from a deep sense of religious, humanitarian and moral responsibility toward the oppressed Palestinian people and aim to pressure the Israeli usurper entity to reopen the crossings to the Gaza Strip and allow the entry of aid, including food and medical supplies,” the statement said.

It described the warning as taking hold in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the Arabian Sea.

The Houthis added that the “ban will remain in effect until the crossings to the Gaza Strip are reopened and humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, is allowed to enter”.

The rebel group had launched more than 100 attacks targeting shipping from November 2023, saying they were in solidarity with Palestinians over Israel’s war on Gaza. During that period, the group sank two vessels, seized another and killed at least four seafarers in an offensive that disrupted global shipping, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around Southern Africa.



Save the Children decries cuts in foreign aid

The charity said governments around the world are cutting foreign aid budgets, forcing the suspension of lifesaving programmes for malnourished children across the globe, including in Gaza.

It said that nearly all of the enclave’s 1.1 million children face “critical food insecurity” and that aid cuts mean reducing treatment for malnourished children mid-recovery.

One Palestinian woman who gave birth 11 months into Israel’s war on Gaza said she did not receive adequate medical assistance during her childbirth and struggled to buy food for her daughter.

“The war took everything—I ended up having to beg on the streets just to get clothes for her. I don’t know how I survived. There was no food,” the woman was quoted as saying. “She was malnourished, and I couldn’t buy milk for her. But I found Save the Children, and they helped me.”

Israeli police again raid Palestinian bookshop in East Jerusalem

Israeli police have briefly detained the co-owner of the prominent Education Bookstore in occupied East Jerusalem and confiscated more than 50 books after raiding the shop for a second time in less than a month.

The Times of Israel said the police raided the store after a caller reported seeing “books containing inciting content” and arrested Imad Muna to “verify his identity and the details of the store”.

Muna was released hours after his detention and most of the books have now been returned, according to his brother, Mahmoud.

Muna’s son, Ahmad, said the police had seized books by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé and Rashid Khalidi, among others.

During the raid in February, police arrested Ahmad and Mahmoud Muna after accusing them of selling books that incited terrorism, including a children’s colouring book entitled From the Jordan to the Sea.