Katz warns Israel will launch ‘plague’ on Houthis after latest missile launch

Israel’s Defense Minister said in a post on X that the “Houthis are firing missiles at Israel again”, after the Yemen-based group’s third launch at the country in 24 hours a short while ago.

In response, Katz said Israel would launch a “plague of darkness, a plague of [the death of] the firstborn – we will complete all 10 plagues” against the group.

Two of the missiles were intercepted and the third landed outside of Israel, according to the Israeli military. No injuries have been reported.

Projectile lands near vessel in Bab al-Mandeb Strait: Report

The UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre (UKMTO) has sent an alert over “suspicious activity” in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, some 178 nautical miles (330km) northwest of Yemen’s Hodeidah.

In an alert published on its website, the UKMTO says a vessel travelling in the strait, The Master, reported that an “unknown projectile” landed in the sea “some distance from the vessel”.

The report said the vessel and crew are safe but cautioned other ships to “transit with caution”.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have previously waged attacks on vessels passing through the strait that they claim are linked to Israel.

Protesters in Jerusalem call to end war, return captives

_{Protesters outside the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demand an end to the war in Gaza and the return of Israeli captives, on September 3}

Israel will only respond to ‘sticks’, not ‘carrots’, in ceasefire talks: Analyst

Israel never had “the intention to reach this ceasefire agreement, because they have other plans”, Luciano Zaccara, a Middle East political analyst, has told Al Jazeera.

He said Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s comments on Wednesday “made it very clear that the intention of Israel is to annex more territories, including [the occupied] West Bank and Gaza“.

“So what is the point in allowing the creation of an entity, either with Hamas or without … that can represent Palestinians when the plan is already set that these territories will belong to Israel sooner or later?” he asked.

“There is no way that Israel would agree to something with Hamas allowing them to survive politically, and allowing the Palestinian entity to be created,” he added.

He said that despite the best efforts of mediators, “[for Israel] there are no more carrots in this conversation, it is only sticks.

“Because the [Israeli] objective is not to negotiate anything, not to give priority to the release of the hostages … but to vacate the whole Gaza Strip in order to implement what they wanted to do, which is [to seize it as] Israeli territory”.

Netanyahu ‘seems to relish’ international criticism of Israel, analyst says

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, said the Israeli government does not grasp the “severity” of the long-term diplomatic isolation it is facing from its war on Gaza, but the international pressure is not really affecting the government at the moment.

He said that the US could end the war “in 24 hours” but chooses not to.

“All it takes is a phone call from President Trump to Netanyahu saying ‘enough is enough, end this war – you have 24 hours to do so,'” Pinkas said, speaking from Tel Aviv.

“Unless the US does that, this international pressure seems not to affect the government at all. In fact, they seem to relish this because, for Netanyahu, politically it’s an ideal situation, although tragic for everyone else involved.

“[Netanyahu says], ‘It’s me against the world, I’m the only one standing up to the world, the world is anti-Semitic, the world is hypocritical’, and so on and so forth.”

And that's how Kim Jong Un stays in power, Israel is heading to become the next North Korea. Backed by the US instead of Russia.

Israeli military representative doubts Gaza City offensive will defeat Hamas

An Israeli military representative told a Knesset committee that the seizure of Gaza City would not necessarily break Hamas’s hold on the enclave, according to public broadcaster Kan.

During a closed session of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the representative was asked why occupying Gaza City would compel Hamas “to budge at all”.

“I did not say it would move Hamas, it is not certain at all,” the representative replied, according to Kan. “The city has symbolic significance.”

As we’ve been reporting, Israeli forces are continuing to ramp up attacks in and around Gaza City as they gear up for a full-on invasion. Overnight and into the early morning, Israeli attacks there killed at least nine Palestinians, including four children, according to local hospital sources.

In 2024 the last Hamas stronghold was Rafah. Then back to Khan Yunis, now Gaza city again.... Meanwhile Hamas is recruiting as many or more people than they lose. Which is exactly according to plan to keep the forever war genocide going.

Only one in four detainees from Gaza in Israeli jails are fighters: Report

A report in the British newspaper The Guardian, citing classified data, says only one in four detainees from Gaza are identified as fighters by Israel’s military intelligence, and civilians make up the “vast majority of Palestinians held without charge or trial in abusive prisons”.

It said those serving long sentences in Israeli jails include medical workers, teachers, civil servants, media workers, writers, sick and disabled people and children.

The newspaper said an 82-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s was jailed by Israeli authorities for six weeks, while a single mother was separated from her young children, and when she was released after 53 days, she found the children begging on the streets.

Israel’s infamous Sde Teiman military base, which doubles as a prison for Palestinians, “at one point held so many sick, disabled and elderly Palestinians that they had their own hangar, dubbed ‘the geriatric pen’,” a soldier serving there said.

US ‘very troubled’ by Norway’s divestment from Caterpillar over Israeli abuses

President Trump’s administration has said it’s “very troubled” by the Norway’s wealth fund’s decision to divest from US construction equipment group Caterpillar on ethical grounds related to Israel’s war on Gaza.

“We are very troubled by the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund’s decision, which appears to be based on illegitimate claims against Caterpillar and the Israeli government,” a US State Department spokesperson said, according to the Reuters news agency.

“We are engaging directly with the Norwegian government on this matter,” the official added.

In late August, Norway’s $2 trillion wealth fund, the world’s largest, announced it had divested from five Israeli banking groups, as well as Caterpillar Inc, on ethical grounds.

The five banks were excluded “due to an unacceptable risk that the companies contribute to serious violations of the rights of individuals in situations of war and conflict”, the fund said in a statement.

It also said Caterpillar’s products, such as bulldozers, were being used by Israeli authorities “to commit extensive and systematic violations of international humanitarian law” such as the “widespread unlawful destruction of Palestinian property”.

_{An Israeli armoured Caterpillar D9 bulldozer manoeuvres near the Israel-Gaza fence on April 10, 2024}

Nelson Mandela’s grandson says Palestinians suffering ‘worse form of apartheid’ than Black South Africans did

Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, has said the hardship facing Palestinians under Israeli occupation exceeds even that suffered by Black South Africans during apartheid.

Speaking to the Reuters news agency on Wednesday, Mandela, 51, said “many of us that have visited the occupied territories in Palestine have only come back with one conclusion: That the Palestinians are experiencing a far worse form of apartheid than we ever experienced.

“We believe that the global community has to continue supporting the Palestinians, just as they stood side by side with us,” he added.

Mandela gave the comments as he prepared to board a flight to Tunisia to join the Global Sumud Flotilla, aimed to deliver food and humanitarian supplies to Gaza. He is among 10 South African activists travelling with the flotilla, which includes dozens of boats and hundreds of people from 44 countries, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

South Africa’s African National Congress said the flotilla’s mission “echoes our own struggle for liberation”.

Israeli forces make more West Bank arrests

The Palestinian Wafa news agency is reporting another round of Israeli raids and arrests in the occupied West Bank. During their latest incursions, it reports that Israeli forces:

Israeli forces shoot, injure two Palestinians while storming Jalazone camp: Report

Israeli forces fired live bullets while storming Jalazone camp near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reports.

The shots hit and injured two young men in the camp, the agency said, describing their condition as “stable”.

Meanwhile, to the north of Ramallah, a group of settlers blocked off an entrance to the Palestinian town of Deir Jarir and stopped residents from passing through, according to Wafa.

MSF warns Palestinians in West Bank face ‘risk of ethnic cleansing’

Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF) says Palestinians in the occupied West Bank face a campaign of forced mass displacement by Israeli soldiers and settlers that “significantly” increases the risk of ethnic cleansing.

The group said that, so far this year, its teams have “witnessed policies and practices that are blatantly designed to remove people from their land and prevent any possibility of return”.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced in Israeli military operations; Palestinian homes are routinely demolished; surging Israeli settler violence “continues with impunity”, and movement restrictions and loss of land and work permits make it impossible for Palestinians to sustain themselves, MSF said.

“Over the past few years, we have seen the impact of the Israeli forces and settlers exerting increased force and control over the Palestinian people – culminating in a genocide in Gaza, and military repression and settler violence escalating across the West Bank,” Simona Onidi, MSF’s project coordinator in Jenin and Tulkarem, said in a statement.

“These actions are entrenched in the broader settler-colonial process, where the risk of ethnic cleansing – through the forced removal of Palestinian communities – will cement permanent demographic change.”

Israeli military carries out overnight attacks in ‘night of hell’ in Gaza City

As we have been reporting, the Israeli military has continued its assault on Gaza City overnight, carrying out several deadly attacks on the urban centre.

Al-Aqsa TV reported “another night of hell” in the city, as hospital sources told Al Jazeera Arabic that at least nine Palestinians, including four children, have been killed so far.

Confirmed attacks include:

‘They erased them all’: Families being decimated in Gaza City

Three-year-old Ibrahim was the sole survivor of an Israeli attack that ripped through a Gaza City apartment and killed his parents and siblings. There’s grief and relief for his grandmother, Umm Abu al-Abed Abu al-Jubein.

“This column and all the rubble were lying on top of him; I don’t know how, but God saved him,” she said. “He is the only one. His mother, father and two siblings were lost. We woke up to the boy screaming … We found my daughter in pieces; her husband and daughters were scattered around her.”

Ibrahim is now one of the more than 49,000 children in Gaza who have lost one or both parents, according to health authorities. UNICEF estimates that at least 17,000 children have been orphaned since Israel’s war on Gaza began.

Entire families are being killed together in their tents and shelters as the Israeli bombardment of Gaza City intensifies.

“My brother was killed, struck inside his room,” displaced Palestinian Sabreen al-Mabhuh said. “They killed him with his wife and children; they erased them all. No one is left.”

Palestinians continue to flee northern Gaza; south faces more overcrowding, inflation

Palestinians who have fled Gaza City over the past few months have found dire conditions elsewhere in Gaza. Their arrival has further overcrowded tent camps and pushed prices of basic goods much higher.

“The beach is crowded. Everywhere is crowded. There’s no hygiene. It’s a struggle to get water and food,” Iman el-Naya, from Khan Younis, who fled Gaza City three months ago, told the AP.

“I go and stand in line for water. Getting bread is a struggle. Everything is even more expensive after the people from the north came here,” she said.

Shorouk Abu Eid, a pregnant woman from Gaza City, who was displaced to Khan Younis four months ago, said the arrival of more people from the north is creating an even more tragic situation.

“There is no privacy, no peace of mind,” she told AP. “Places I used to walk to in five or 10 minutes are taking me around an hour now because of the congestion. There’s barely 10cm [4 inches] between tents,” Abu Eid added.


_{Displacement camps in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip}

Israeli-induced starvation deaths in Gaza rise to 370

At least 370 Palestinians have died from starvation in Gaza since the start of Israel’s war in October 2023, including 131 children, Gaza’s Health Ministry says.

The ministry said at least three people died of malnutrition in the Strip over the last 24 hours.

At least 84 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over last 24 hours, ministry says

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported that at least 84 people were killed and 338 others wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza over the last 24 hours.

The ministry said “a number of victims remain under the rubble and on the streets, as ambulance and civil defence crews are unable to reach them at this time.”

It said at least 17 people were killed while seeking aid and 174 were injured over the last 24 hours, taking the total number of killed aid seekers to 2,356, with at least 17,244 aid seekers injured.

The ministry said that 401 deaths were also added to the registry after their identities were verified.

It said the latest casualties brought the total death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza to 64,231, and 161,583 injured since October 7, 2023.

Palestinians in Gaza City forced to produce fuel from plastic waste

_{Palestinians living in Nuseirat camp burn collected plastic waste and wood to obtain fuel}

_{Due to difficulties in obtaining fuel, some Palestinians are producing industrial fuel using primitive methods to meet their daily needs. The toxic fumes emitted from this process threaten human health and the environment.}

Jeremy Corbyn-led Gaza inquiry kicks off in London

An event examining the UK’s role in Israel’s war on Gaza, hosted by former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, is under way in London.

“The suffering of the Palestinian people have gone on for a long time, but 63,000 have died since October 2023, and we’re watching livestreamed on television children being starved to death,” Corbyn said in his opening remarks at “The Gaza Tribunal”.

“It is our job as members of parliament, it is our job as citizens to hold our government to account for what is going on,” said Corbyn, now an independent MP launching a new left-wing party.

‘Not only is the UK actively killing us, but they refuse to help us’

“The UK has, for a very long time, supported and participated actively in our killing and has colonised most of the Global South, and the hospitals that you visit today in the UK are built on our shoulders and the shoulders of our ancestors,” Hala Sabbah of the Sameer Project says at the Corbyn-led Gaza inquiry.

“Yet how many children from Gaza came to the UK for medical evacuation?” she asked, adding that you can count the number on “one hand”.

“Italy, Spain, other countries have hosted hundreds of children into their hospitals. The UK refuses completely,” she said.

“So not only is the UK actively killing us, but they refuse to help us.”