The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad conducted two rocket attacks on southern Israel on Thursday as the Israeli military called in air strikes against dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip, war monitors said.

In their latest battlefield assessment, US-based think tanks the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) report that Israeli forces concluded a week-long operation in Nuseirat in central Gaza to expand the Netzarim corridor, which cuts the Palestinian territory in two.

The corridor – a 6.5km (4-mile) road built by the Israelis – runs from east to west and was designed to give Israel’s military rapid access to Gaza and to cut off Palestinian movement between north and south in the territory.

The ISW and CTP said previously that Hamas and other armed groups had likely used an area in the central Gaza Strip as a rear base to target Israeli forces in northern Gaza and to also slip into previously cleared areas of southern Gaza City.

NEW: The IDF Air Force struck Palestinian fighters and military infrastructure in the northern Gaza Strip.

The IDF concluded a week-long operation targeting Palestinian fighters and military infrastructure near Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/rFeHF2Ifll

— Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar) April 19, 2024

Israeli air raid hits Jabalia refugee camp

More signs are on the horizon of a potential Israeli military incursion into Rafah.

The military has deployed more troops in all areas that are adjacent to Rafah district. And since the early hours of this morning, they have been pounding the majority of the agricultural land in the eastern areas of Rafah.

The military plan that Israel has proposed to the US administration stresses the Israelis’ wish to evacuate the vast majority of Rafah’s population to other areas in Gaza. These areas are still unknown, and the evacuation process will be very difficult.

But the real question is where the locations could be in light of the ongoing destruction of the majority of Gaza’s civil infrastructure. Life in other areas of the Strip will be critically difficult.

As concerns mount over a potential Israeli military incursion into Rafah, many Palestinians sheltering there are at a loss over where they could turn next as much of the rest of the enclave is in shambles, reports Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum from Rafah.

Evacuating displaced Palestinians in Rafah to other areas of Gaza, as Israel has proposed, would be especially catastrophic for those who need medical care, which is sparsely available in the rest of the enclave.

“If people are transferred to other parts of the Gaza Strip, it will be a full collapse of medical services,” said Abu Azzoum.

Foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) bloc have issued a joint statement after a meeting on the Italian island of Capri.calling for the release of Israeli captives in Gaza and a sustainable ceasefire in the enclave

The G7 statement also expressed opposition to a full-scale military operation inside Rafah, which Israel’s government has been threatening despite the presence of more than 1.7 million displaced Palestinians there.

“We reiterate our call for a credible and actionable plan to protect the civilian population there,” the foreign ministers said.

G7 members include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union.

Senior Israeli officials have discussed the possibility that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague will issue arrest warrants for senior politicians and military chiefs over the conduct of Israel’s war on Gaza, according to media reports.

The Times of Israel said the office of Foreign Minister Israel Katz confirmed that a meeting was held this week during which discussions took place “about the possibility that warrants could be issued” for Israeli military officials.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also raised the possibility of arrest warrants for breaches of international law in Gaza during meetings with the UK’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

According to The Times of Israel report, Netanyahu “sought their help” with possible ICC warrants.

Don't worry, at the pace the ICC is working...

Some sense left in Israel. Those born in the West Bank aren't so lucky.

Israeli court orders release of anti-Zionist professor: Report

_{Palestinian Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, center, appears in a Jerusalem court on charges on incitement, Friday, April 19, 2024.}

Biden mulling another $1.3bn in weapons sales to Israel: Report

Mohammad Javad Zarif has condemned the “reckless fireworks” carried out in Iran’s city of Isfahan, urging world leaders to instead focus on “ending Israeli transgressions” in its ongoing war on Gaza.

In a statement posted on X, the former Iranian foreign minister said nothing should divert international public opinion from “Israel’s atrocities”. “Genocide continues apace in Gaza,” said the chief Iranian negotiator of the ill-fated 2015 nuclear deal with the US and world powers.

He also criticised the US veto on the UN Security Council resolution on Palestine’s UN membership, saying it was “clearly a step in the wrong direction”.

Zarif also said that the council’s failure to condemn the April 1 strike on the Iranian diplomatic premises in Syria compelled Iran to invoke its right to self-defence, referring to the April 13 attack on Israel.

An investigation is under way to determine where the drones were launched from and who was behind the attack, but according to Iranian officials nothing has been damaged. The IAEA has also said there is no damage sustained to any of the country’s six nuclear facilities.

Things are still very tense and whether or not this is the final response by Israel is unclear.

But what is clear is that this attack has been successfully repelled by Iran and its forces for the time being. Whether or not anything else will happen in the coming hours or days remains to be seen, but for now there doesn’t seem to be any appetite here to further escalate the situation between Iran and Israel.

The sanctioned individuals “are responsible for serious human rights abuses against Palestinians,” the European Council said in a press release, with two of the individuals taking part in deadly attacks on Palestinians.

It named the sanctioned settlers as Meir Ettinger, Elisha Yered, Neria Ben Pazi, and Yinon Levi.

In addition, the council announced sanctions on two entities – Jewish supremacist group Lehava and radical youth group Hilltop Youth, whose members it said are known for violence in the occupied West Bank.

“With today’s listings, restrictive measures under the EU’s Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime now apply to 108 natural and legal persons and 28 entities from a range of countries,” said the council.

As we previously reported, Hebrew University Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was released from custody after being arrested on Thursday for calling Israelis “criminals”.

Offer Cassif, an Israeli Knesset member, said that alongside the continuous “assault on Gaza and the ethnic cleansing” in the occupied West Bank is the “political persecution within Israel of anyone who raises a voice different from the mainstream”.

“Too many within the Israeli academia began to collaborate with this hegemonic attitude, and the prosecution of my friend Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is part of it,” Cassif told Al Jazeera.

Cassif added that while the biggest target for the police is Palestinian citizens of Israel, some Jewish citizens are also being persecuted.

“The only thing standing between [Palestinians in Gaza] and a ceasefire is Hamas,” Blinken claimed in his G7 remarks.

The Palestinian group Hamas has “rejected generous proposals from Israel. It seems more interested in a regional conflict than it is in a ceasefire that would immediately improve the lives of the Palestinian people”, Blinken added.

“It is a confirmation of the American administration’s blatant bias towards Zionist fascism and a falsification of reality that confirms that whoever obstructs the course of negotiations for [Netanyahu’s] personal political calculations,” Hamas said in a statement.

“The Hamas movement’s negotiating behaviour was based on the interest of our Palestinian people and the priority of stopping the brutal aggression against them, the withdrawal of the occupation, the return of the displaced, and ending their human suffering created by the American-funded killing machine,” Hamas said.

The group added that if the US was sincere in wanting to stop the war in Gaza, it must pressure Israel “and stop the American political and military cover for the crimes of genocide and starvation practiced by the Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians in the Gaza Strip”.

Irish Member of Parliament Richard Boyd Barrett says the US is “very committed” to defending the Israeli government and showed this on Thursday when it used its veto to block Palestine from becoming a full UN member.

“The United States has been key to providing Israelis with the means and the impunity to continue its crimes in Gaza over the last six months but also for many decades, so I don’t think anybody could be surprised, and in many ways, Israel is a creature of US foreign policy,” Barrett told Al Jazeera.

He added that European countries were currently discussing recognising the state of Palestine due to the growing awareness of the treatment of Palestinians during the war.

“But we do not want it to be a substitute for the sanctions that need to be imposed on Israel. And I fear sometimes there’s a tendency, my own government, other governments in Europe, to give symbolic support for Palestine but not follow it up with what’s really necessary,” he added.





Stop fighting the symptoms, it's clear what the root cause is

Shipping industry urges UN to protect vessels

Anyone remember the sea corridor? Some do

Gaza Freedom Flotilla participants prepare to embark

As we’ve been reporting, Israeli forces have been conducting a raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp east of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank. Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Tulkarem, says in the past hour, four Palestinian fighters have been killed by Israeli forces.

“One of them was the leader of the Tulkarem resistance brigade, the battalion of about 50 men strong that is based in Tulkarem, a man named Mohammed Jaber,” he said. He added that the four bodies of the Palestinian fighters were taken into Israeli custody.

Jaber has been targeted in the past, and his brother was killed in December. “This very dramatic escalation of events in the occupied West Bank in this ongoing raid seemed to have been successful in targeting Mohammed Jaber,” he added.




Two settlers at a time, that's not going to solve anything. In fact, this just proves the US is only stoking the fires by targeting a few individuals with sanctions. It's the government that arms and stands behind the settlers. That's where the sanctions need to go.

US issues sanctions on two Israeli entities

US veto was ‘irresponsible’, Iranian official says

Relatives of captives held in Gaza have blocked a main highway linking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, local media reported. Dozens of protesters, including the family members and their supporters, gathered and “blocked off Route 1”, the Times of Israel said.

Some have set barrels on fire in an attempt to block traffic in a sign of protest. Relatives of those taken by Hamas on October 7 have been protesting for months, demanding  that the Israeli government bring back their loved ones.

משפחות חטופים חוסמות בשעה זו את כביש 1 - והבעירו חביות במקום@OrRavid

צילום: דנור אהרון pic.twitter.com/EW88FoRdo3

— החדשות - N12 (@N12News) April 19, 2024

_{A woman is helped after being hit by a driver on the highway near Ben Shemen, Israel, during the protest}

Protesters rally in Sanaa to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza

Rallies held worldwide show support for Palestinians in Gaza


_{Demonstrators carry flags during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza outside Al Kalouti mosque near the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan}

_{Pro-Palestinian activists protest outside the US Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, on 19 April 2024. Hundreds of activists and artists staged a protest in front of the US embassy to urge the US goverment to stop supporting Israeli operations in Gaza.}

_{Civil society activists hold placards as they attend a demonstration in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Hyderabad, Pakistan}

Gaza’s Government Media Office says all of the city’s water wells had stopped functioning two weeks ago. The wells are no longer operational mainly due to a lack of fuel, which Israel has banned from entering the Strip since it imposed a total blockade more than six months ago.

Gaza City’s only desalination plant, more than 40 water wells and the city’s water networks have been destroyed, the office said. It warned that the “crisis” has reached its peak as temperatures continue to rise and demand for water consumption has also increased.

“The whole city is living in a state of extreme thirst,” it said. Gaza’s “health and environmental crisis” is only going to get much worse amid extreme water shortages, the office added.

‘Hundreds’ suffering from respiratory illnesses amid lack of cooking gas

Several killed in attack on southern Gaza’s Rafah