Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud has called for a halt in the attacks against the Palestinian people while delivering a message welcoming Eid Al-Fitr, a three-day celebration that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“Let us stress the need of stopping attacks on the Palestinian people, providing safe humanitarian corridors, and ending their suffering by enabling them to obtain all their legitimate rights,” Saudi Arabia’s official news agency, SPA, quoted him as saying.

These rights include establishing “their independent state and living in safety”, the statement said.

Bernie Sanders: US cannot be complicit in using starvation as weapon in Gaza

Publicly, mediators continue to say that things are better than they were 72 hours ago. There is some progress. But the game that is being played by the Israeli government is rather pathetic.

They have been saying that they are going into Rafah, for what feels like an eternity. Now they’re saying, “We have set a date“. But what does that really mean? Does it mean to be psychological pressure on Hamas to come to a deal, otherwise watch out? Because for the past months, that “otherwise, watch out” has not worked out with Hamas.

The other thing is that every time [Israeli PM Benjamin] Netanyahu says anything about attacking Rafah or setting a date, the US says, “What date? We haven’t even met to discuss the strategy over Rafah”. The game is a bit transparent.

Justin Welby has said he was “shocked and deeply concerned” by the news that Layan Nasir, a 23-year-old Palestinian Christian woman, has been detained by Israeli forces and that her family has not been informed of her whereabouts.

“Together with our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters, I pray for Layan and her family – and for the congregation of St Peter’s Anglican Church in the occupied West Bank. Please pray for Layan’s safety and swift release,” he said in a post on X.

Nasir, a member of St Peter’s church in Birzeit, was taken by Israeli troops on Saturday. Her family said they were not given a reason for her detention nor were they told where she is being held.

We have more from the OCHA spokesman. Laerke disputed Israeli claims that it is allowing more aid into the besieged coastal enclave:

• He pointed out that the trucks screened by the Israeli government office that coordinates aid entry were “typically only half-full. That is a requirement that they have put in place for screening purposes”.
• The trucks are then reloaded, filling them up fully, before moving on to the warehouses. “Already there, the numbers will never match up,” Laerke said.
• He also said that “counting day to day and comparing makes little sense because it does not take into account the delays that happen at the crossing and the further movement to warehouses”.
• He pointed to delays linked to the crossing point opening hours and the fact that Israel has barred Egyptian drivers and trucks from being in the same area at the same time as Palestinian drivers and trucks. “That means there’s not a smooth handover.”
• While Israel complains about UN distribution, “Half of the convoys that we were trying to send to the north with food [in March] were denied by the very same Israeli authorities.”

Israel has said 419 trucks – the highest since the war on the besieged coastal enclave began – entered on Monday, but the Red Crescent and United Nations gave much lower figures, with the latter saying many vehicles were only half full because of Israeli inspection rules.

Red Crescent officials in Egypt said 350 trucks had crossed from there into Gaza on Monday while UNRWA said 223 trucks had entered, fewer than half the 500 trucks it says are required daily.

UN agency OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke also pointed to severe restrictions on delivery of aid inside Gaza itself last month saying Israel had denied permission for half the convoys it tried sending to the north in March, with UN aid convoys three times more likely to be refused than any other.

Israel said it would open the closed Beit Hanoon (Erez) crossing point into northern Gaza from Israel for aid supplies, but none of the trucks that entered on Monday went through that.

In February and March, Israel denied access to 40 percent of all food aid missions in Gaza, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

Access for the UNRWA is particularly strained with Israel blocking all its food convoys since March – and blocking all its food convoys to the north of the enclave since January, the agency said in its latest situation update.

Israel says aid is moving into Gaza more quickly after international pressure to increase access, but the amount is disputed and the United Nations says it is still much less than the bare minimum to meet humanitarian needs.

The United States does not have evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has told a Senate hearing. “We don’t have evidence of that,” Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

During the hearing, Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas asked Austin: “You stand accused by those protesters of greenlighting genocide. Would you like to respond to that accusation?”

Austin replied, “What I would say Senator Cotton from the very beginning is that we are committed to help assist Israel in defending its territory and its people by providing security assistance. And I would remind everybody that you know what happened on October 7 was absolutely horrible.”

Israel’s war on Gaza, launched in response to October 7 attacks by Hamas that killed 1,139 Israelis, has left more than 33,000 Palestinians dead and displaced nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population – events that have led to genocide allegations that Israel denies.

The US is Israel’s biggest military supporter and is accused of complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza.

The UK foreign secretary, as he concludes his joint press conference with his US counterpart, says his country’s position on arms sales to Israel remains unchanged. “The latest assessment leaves our position on export licences unchanged. This is consistent with the advice that I and other ministers have received,” David Cameron said. “And as ever, we will keep the position under review.”

When asked for more detail by a reporter, Cameron refused to elaborate on what legal advice his government was given when assessing whether or not to restrict arms sales to Israel.

Last week, three former senior UK judges joined more than 600 members of the British legal profession in calling for the government to halt arms sales to Israel. Britain supplied 42 million pounds ($53m) of arms to Israel in 2022.

Gaza Civil Defense reports that its crews recovered 14 bodies from a house belonging to the Abu Youssef family, which was bombed by the Israeli army, in the al-Zawaida area of the refugee camp in central Gaza.

The group has published photos on its official Telegram channel showing recovery operations in the western and eastern Satar area of the Khan Younis Governate of the Gaza Strip, saying they found 13 bodies.

In some photos shared by the Civil Defence, deemed too graphic to share on this live page, bones are all that remains of some of the recovered bodies.

Motasem Salah, director of the hospital’s Gaza Emergency Operations Centre, has told AFP that Gaza lacked the forensic experts needed to help identify the dead or determine what had happened to them. So they are relying on “the expertise of the WHO and OCHA [UN humanitarian office] delegation.”

They are trying “to identify the decomposed bodies and the body parts that were crushed” from wallets and documents, he said, as a digger went through the rubble and rescue workers pulled decomposed bodies from the sand and ruins.

Relatives were also there “to ascertain the fate of their sons, whether they have been killed, are missing, or have been displaced to the south,” said Amjad Aliwa, the head of al-Shifa’s emergency department.

He said they wanted to identify “their sons and ensure they receive a proper burial. However, we lack the necessary equipment, and time is not on our side. We must complete the job before the bodies decompose,” Aliwa said.

A big crowd of Christians for a Free Palestine are protesting in the US Senate cafeteria – pushing Congress to back a ceasefire, restore aid to UNRWA and end US military aid to Israel.

“Congress and their staff will not eat today”, they chanted, “until Gaza eats”.

“I want to loudly proclaim that my Christian faith calls me to challenge Christian Zionism and stand in solidarity with Palestine,” reverent Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a national leader with Christians for a Free Palestine, said in a news release.

About 50 activists were arrested, according to Capitol Police spokeswoman Brianna Burch

Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty International UK’s crisis response manager, said it was “predictable that David Cameron still insists that there are no grounds for the UK to suspend arms transfers to Israel even after Israeli forces have killed thousands of civilians, including aid workers in Gaza.”

Earlier, we reported that Foreign Minister David Cameron said the UK will not halt arms sales to Israel by British companies.

“The foreign secretary ought to have told his counterparts in the US administration that the UK will immediately suspend arms transfers to Israel, including the supply of components for US-made F-35 bombers which are being used by Israeli forces in Gaza with such horrendous consequences for Palestinians,” Benedict said.

“This was yet another missed opportunity from David Cameron to move himself and other UK officials away from their current complicity in Israeli war crimes, apartheid and possible genocide.”

Former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been heckled by a pro-Palestinian protester at an event at Arizona State University. A video posted on social media showed a man interrupting the event and yelling at Pelosi.

“Nancy Pelosi, you are complicit in genocide. The blood of over 15,000 Palestinian babies is on your hands!” he said.

Pelosi visited the university on Monday to participate in a “Democracy at Work” discussion with David Axelrod, the former chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. Five protesters in total disrupted the event before being removed by security, The university’s State Press reported.

US Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican who represents Arkansas, has said that Israel has no responsibility to provide aid to people in Gaza.

In a Senate hearing exchange with Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday, Cotton questioned the defence chief about comments suggesting that Israel has a responsibility to provide aid to the war-torn enclave.

“Israel is the victim of a vicious unprovoked attack on October 7. Why should they provide aid to the… aggressors on October 7? We didn’t provide aid to Germany and Japan during World War II,” Cotton said.

After Austin replied that the US has provided aid in many countries where it has a military presence, Cotton again compared Gaza to World War II-era Germany. “If you had been in George Marshall’s or Dwight Eisenhower’s position in WWII, would you have wanted to provide aid to Germany?” he asked.

Israel has no responsibility to provide aid to Gaza.

We didn’t provide aid to Germany or Japan during WWII, and the Biden administration’s efforts are undermining Israel. pic.twitter.com/seoBsNA00C

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) April 9, 2024

The president of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) has called for “compassion” and “solidarity” in an Eid message acknowledging “unimaginable challenges” in Gaza. Dennis Francis, who is also Trinidad and Tobago’s UN ambassador, oversees the 193-member UNGA, which voted overwhelmingly in support of a ceasefire in December last year.

This is a much more subdued Eid than in previous years. Many people are looking at the situation in Gaza and it’s affecting the way they want to celebrate. They’re not celebrating Eid in that joyous way that they normally would.

Also, there is no ceasefire yet. There was supposed to be a Ramadan ceasefire, a ceasefire for the holy month. That hasn’t happened.

The holy month has now come to an end.

There might be a huge number of people arriving here today but the atmosphere is very much subdued.

Eid begins in Gaza with Israeli drones buzzing overhead