Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners rights group, says children held in Israeli prisons are subject to assault and beatings and are often deprived of adequate food, personal hygiene items and other essentials.

“Several testimonies reported that they were subjected to severe beatings during their time in prison. Statistics and documented testimonies from child detainees indicate that the majority of detained children have been subjected to one or more forms of physical and psychological torture,” according to Addameer.

Eighteen-year-old Palestinian prisoner Mohammed Nazzal, who was released in November, was seen in news reports at the time with casts on both arms. He said they were broken during abuse in prison. Speaking to Addameer, Nazzal recalled being assaulted by Israeli forces while in detention.

One of the solders “repeatedly struck me on the head, so I tried to shield myself. My hands and fingers were broken. I was bedridden for a week. Another prisoner had to feed me and help me drink,” he said.

Climate Defiance, a climate activist group focused on young adults, says this could make the besieged coastal enclave “uninhabitable not just for years but for generations”. In a post on X, it says that up to 48 percent of tree cover and farmland in the strip has been torched and 23 percent of greenhouses have been destroyed in their entirety.

“This is a war crime. This is ecocide,” it says. “This is not ‘just’ about nature. This is about the food and the air and the water and the land being deprived of life. It is about a whole population being denied its sustenance.”

Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that Israeli settlers burned four residential structures in the Ain al-Auja area, north of Jericho in the West Bank. Mahmoud Ghawanmeh, a Palestinian resident of the community, told Wafa that the settlers sprayed racist slogans on several buildings before setting the fires.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded 561 incidents of Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians between October 7 and February 20. As of January 17, settlers have killed at least eight Palestinians and injured 111, per OCHA’s database. Repeated waves of violence by settlers, often backed by the army, have led to the displacement of 1,208 Palestinians, including 586 children, across 198 households.

Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari has issued a statement in which he revealed the results of an investigation into the killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff.

Hagari claimed, without presenting evidence, that “a number of gunmen” came in and out of some of the cars being tracked by the Israeli army, a group that apparently included the World Central Kitchen aid convoy.

“After some of the vehicles split from the others, the forces that were tracking the vehicles that went south did so thinking that these were Hamas vehicles”, he continued.

He later said that the incident was a “tragic mistake” that “could and should have been prevented” and stemmed from “serious operational failures, mistaken classification and identification, errors in decision-making and strikes that were conducted in violation of standard operating procedures”.

He concluded that the Israeli military “takes full responsibility for this regrettable loss of life”.

This admission from the Israeli army appears to confirm an Al Jazeera investigation, which found that the WCK vehicles were targeted deliberately, and not hit by accident.

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Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a key ally of Joe Biden, has signed a letter from dozens of congressional Democrats to the US president and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging a halt to weapons transfers to Israel.

Friday’s letter, which the California congresswoman signed, called on the Biden administration to conduct its own probe into an Israeli air strike that killed seven staff of the aid group World Central Kitchen on Monday.

“In light of the recent strike against aid workers and the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis, we believe it is unjustifiable to approve these weapons transfers,” the letter said. It was signed by Pelosi and 36 other Democrats including Representatives Barbara Lee, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said that information from Israel about the death of an Australian aid worker during an air strike on Gaza was “not sufficient”.

After being briefed by Israeli authorities, Australia had “made clear that we have not yet received sufficient information to satisfy our expectations”, Wong told reporters in Adelaide after Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom was killed.

The Australian government has announced that it would appoint a special adviser to work with Israel to ensure “full confidence” in investigations into an air strike in Gaza that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers including an Australian.

“The government will appoint a special adviser, who we have requested the Israelis work with, so we can be advised about the appropriateness of the process,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.

Israel has dismissed two officers and formally reprimanded senior commanders after an inquiry into the strike that killed aid workers, including Australian Zomi Frankcom.

Wong described the dismissals as “necessary first steps” but said the information provided by Israel on the death of Frankcom and other aid workers was “not sufficient.”

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Between walls and barriers

The fighting continues. The air raids continue. The air strikes continue to pound areas across central Gaza, the city of Khan Younis, as well as Gaza City in the north.

These attacks are obstructing humanitarian aid. And following Israel’s attack on the World Central Kitchen (WCK) employees earlier this week, a lot of people – donors, volunteers, and aid workers on the ground – are very discouraged.

The more the bombings continue, the more we’re seeing increasingly difficult conditions on the ground.

No significant change in Gaza aid flow

The US, Qatar and Egypt want to keep negotiations alive and see a ceasefire. But Hamas was unimpressed with the last Israeli proposal, enough that it didn’t properly respond to it, saying there wasn’t anything new.

The Israelis think that Hamas is making delusional demands, while Hamas thinks Israelis are being intransigent.

A reminder of where we are with these demands:

• Hamas says it wants the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, a permanent ceasefire, the return of displaced Palestinians to the north of the strip, a substantial increase in aid and the rebuilding of the strip, the release of an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jail in exchange for the Israeli captives.
• On the other side, Netanyahu said the war won’t stop with a ceasefire, that he won’t release any “terrorists” and that the military doesn’t want civilians returning to the north just yet.

They seem to be stuck in a cycle.

The United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, Martin Griffiths, slammed Israel’s war on Gaza as a “betrayal of humanity”.

“Rarely has there been such global outrage at the toll of conflict, with seemingly so little done to end it and instead so much impunity,” Griffiths said in a statement on the eve of the six-month anniversary of the war.

There is something new happening and it’s not because President Biden simply changed his mind, it’s because there is a gathering momentum. There’s an Israel fatigue in the United States and around the world.

There is a definite Netanyahu fatigue in the Biden administration, and that fatigue – people getting tired of more of the same Israeli lies, more of the same Israeli crimes, more of the same Israeli justifications – is pushing the administration to do something or at least maintain some sort of appearance that it is serious about doing something.

We’ve noticed that as soon as some form of leverage was used, the aid did increase, so both the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government weren’t telling us the truth.

The aid wasn’t going into Gaza; not because of some technical issues or some Egyptian issues, but because Israel did not want it to get in, and America wasn’t doing everything possible to protect civilian lives and help get aid in.

Oxfam, an antipoverty charity, says that in the southern city, there is very little food, safety and even clothes for people who have been forced to flee the Gaza Strip’s northern areas.

Calling for an immediate ceasefire, the non-profit said: “Israel complicates a humanitarian response and hinders access to urgently needed basic services, including water, food, medicine and fuel.”

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the UN agency and other partner organisations have managed to reach the medical complex Gaza City following Israel’s deadly two-week siege.

“The team witnessed at least five dead bodies during the mission. Most of the buildings in the hospital complex are extensively destroyed and the majority of assets damaged or reduced to ashes. Even restoring minimal functionality in the short term seems implausible,” he said in a post on X.

“An in-depth assessment by a team of engineers is needed to determine if the remaining buildings are safe for future use. WHO and partners’ recent effort to support the revival of basic services at al-Shifa are now lost, and people are once again deprived of access to lifesaving health care services.”

The draft decree, which appears on the agenda for the weekly government meeting held on Sundays, shows that the cabinet is seeking approval for $154m for the expansion of prisons.

The document shows it plans to make space for an additional 1,036 Palestinians, including in Ktzi’ot and Ofer prisons.

The Israeli army says it carried out attacks on several “Hezbollah terror infrastructure” in the areas of Aita al-Shaab, Arnoun and Tayr Harfa in southern Lebanon. In a situational update on Telegram, the army said the areas of Alma ash-Shaab and Souaneh were also hit overnight.

The attacks come after the army said five rockets were launched from Lebanon into northern Israel overnight.


_{A picture taken from the southern Lebanese village of Alma al-Shaab shows smoke rising from an Israeli outpost after a rocket attack by Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement fighters on April 6}


Hamas is still fighting back

Qassam Brigades claim over a dozen Israeli soldiers killed in Khan Younis

With international reporters locked out, Palestinian journalists have made huge sacrifices to keep the world informed of the unprecedented killing and destruction in Gaza. More media workers have been killed by Israel since October 7 than in any other conflict in modern history.

Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post spent time with three Al Jazeera journalists between February and March 2024 to learn what it’s been like to cover the deadly war.

Palestinian journalists are asking members of the US media to boycott the highly anticipated event on April 27 “as an act of solidarity with us – your fellow journalists – as well as with the millions of Palestinians currently being starved in Gaza”.

“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering. We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity,” the appeal says.

The journalists stress that the “White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an embodiment of media manipulation, trading journalistic ethics for access. For journalists to fraternise at an event with President Biden and Vice President Harris would be to normalise, sanitise, and whitewash the administration’s role in genocide.”

According to a preliminary count from the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 95 journalists and media workers have been killed since Israel began its war on Gaza.

The war has stretched on for half a year and has become one of the most destructive, deadly, and intractable conflicts of the 21st century. Since October 7, Israel has pummelled the Gaza Strip, displacing the vast majority of the population and causing many to flee to Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah.

Here’s a look at the war in numbers:

• Palestinians killed in Gaza: 33,137
• Children killed in Gaza: more than 13,000
• Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank: 456
• Palestinians currently displaced in Gaza: 1.7 million (70 percent of the population)
• Percentage of buildings likely damaged/destroyed: 55.9 percent
• Percentage of homes likely damaged: more than 60 percent
• Percentage of school buildings damaged: 90 percent
• Hospitals that are functioning: 10/36
• Palestinian civilians facing “catastrophic” food insecurity, according to the UN: 1.1 million
• Percentage of northern Gaza children under the age of two who are acutely malnourished: 31 percent
• Percentage of students out of school: 100 percent
• Mosques damaged: 227
• Churches damaged: 3

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has marked “six months of a bloody and difficult war” in a long post on X in which he paid tribute to the people who lost their lives in the October 7 attacks and the families of the captives.

He also hailed the Israeli military, stating, “We have an army that will stand against every enemy, near and far.”

He concluded the post by saying, “For half a year I have seen Israeli society in all its glory: The mutual responsibility on the front and at home – despite all the disagreements – the commitment to life, the closeness to others, the unique Israeli resilience.”

Herzog living inside his own delusional universe

Large demonstrations in Tel Aviv’s Democracy Square are currently being held by the families of Israeli captives and members of the public, who are calling for early elections and the dismissal of Netanyahu’s government.

Demonstrations aimed at the prime minister’s handling of the negotiations around the captives held in Gaza have become a regular occurrence in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem since the early months of the war.

Today’s demonstrations come as ceasefire negotiations – which include discussions about the release of the captives – are set to take place in Cairo, with representatives from Hamas and mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US.

Below, video verified by Al Jazeera, shows the crowd forming in Tel Aviv: