Israeli forces have injured seven more Palestinians during their raid of Tulkarem’s Nur Shams refugee camp, which has now taken place for about 40 hours, according to Palestinian media reports citing the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

As we reported earlier, five people, including a teenager, have already been killed during the raid.

The raid doesn’t seem to be ending. We’re not only hearing sounds of Israeli drones but also of bombs. The Tulkarem Battalion just released a statement saying they will continue to engage in armed confrontations with the Israeli forces in the camp.

Because of the situation and how risky it is, it’s hard for us and much of the media to go inside the camp. But we’re seeing videos of the destruction, which is unlike anything we’ve seen before. We’re looking at a very large level of destruction and demolition.

Palestinians in the camp say Israeli forces are going from one home to another. This is something we’ve seen before – homes being turned into detention centres and mass detentions.

Anyone who lives in the camp is enduring a lot and could be subjected to beatings or arrests.

At least 11 people in Nur Shams have been injured today and three homes blown up as Israel’s raid on the refugee camp, now continuing for more than 40 hours, drags on, reports the Wafa news agency. Seven of the people were hit by Israeli bullets, while four were beaten by Israeli soldiers, said Wafa.

The wounded were taken to Martyr Dr Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital and Al-Israa Speciality Hospital in Tulkarem. The raid has been described as one of the most destructive ever in the camp, with Israelis bulldozers wrecking much of its infrastructure.

At least five people have also been killed during the raid, a number that is expected to go up, according to Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting outside the camp in Tulkarem.

Israeli forces have detained 30 Palestinians throughout the occupied West Bank in the last two days of raids, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society. Half of those arrested were taken from the Nur Shams refugee camp, where a more than 40-hour-raid is continuing, said the group.

Three of those arrested include women from Jerusalem who were later released, the group added. The latest arrests bring the total number of Palestinians detained by Israeli forces since October 7 to 8,340.

Hudhaifa Mahmoud Abu Eita, a volunteer paramedic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), has been missing for more than 120 days after being taken into Israeli custody from northern Gaza, says the group.

He is one of six PRCS members whose whereabouts are unknown after being arrested by Israeli forces during the Gaza war, said the organisation.

Twenty-seven additional PRCS staff members have been killed in Israeli attacks during the war, including 17 while on the job, according to PRCS, which says its ambulances have repeatedly been fired upon while trying to reach injured Palestinians.

Ahmed Barhoum lost his wife, their five-year-old daughter, and five other relatives in an Israeli air attack on their home in Rafah last night. “This is a world devoid of all human values and morals,” Barhoum told The Associated Press news agency while holding the body of his slain daughter, Alaa.

“They bombed a house full of displaced people, women and children. There were no martyrs but women and children.”

‘Heartbreaking’ scenes of killed children taken for burial after Rafah strike

‘Not even the cemetery was spared’

Heavy artillery shelling north of Nuseirat

Rafah the ‘main focus’ of Israeli military in Gaza

Several Israeli surveillance drones are hovering above Rafah

Lawmakers are expected to vote later today on military aid packages for Israel, Ukraine and others in the Asia Pacific region.

The three bills are part of Speaker Mike Johnson’s complex strategy to get aid out to foreign allies while quelling a rebellion by hardline Republicans who prefer to see cash spent at home on border security measures and are prepared to boot him out of his job to get their way.

Under pressure, Johnson came up with a multipronged approach that would see three separate votes on the partitioned bills, allocating $60.84bn in long-delayed aid to Ukraine, some $26bn for Israel and about $8bn for Asia Pacific allies – Taiwan, in the main – to counter Chinese expansionism.

Some conservatives will baulk at the $9.2bn in humanitarian aid for Gaza, which was also contained in a previous bill passed by the Senate. “That could be a potential stumbling block,” Chris Tuttle, a DC-based senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told Al Jazeera.

“A prompt admission of Palestine into the United Nations is a move to rectify a prolonged historical injustice,” Xinhua News Agency quoted Wang Yi as saying. His comment came after the US voted against recognising a Palestinian state by vetoing a Security Council resolution, denying Palestinians full membership of the world body.

China has long supported the idea that Palestinian statehood would pave the way for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The country has also been strengthening ties with the Palestinian Authority as it seeks a greater role in the Middle East to edge out US influence there.

Abbas denounces US’s veto of Palestinian UN membership

Propaganda works

Israeli analyst Gideon Levy says large swaths of the Israeli public fully accept their government’s narrative about Iran’s missile attack and don’t see it as a consequence of Israel’s suspected assassination of an Iranian senior commander in Damascus.

“Most Israelis do not see the connection between the assassination in Damascus and the Iranian attack,” said Levy.

“Israelis don’t ask themselves unfortunately: Was this assassination really necessary at this time when we are stuck in Gaza? What came out of it? Does this really serve any of Israel’s interests?” he said

“Those questions are not asked in Israel because Israel is quite narrow-minded in this war and following the government quite blindly.”


But not on all Israelis

Israelis protest at prison where Gaza detainees held

The government media office in Gaza says the total number of aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip on a daily basis ranges, on average, between 130 and 150 trucks. In a press release, the media office said the Israeli “narrative” adopted by the United States that there are around 300 aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip daily, “is a complete lie and a falsification of reality”,

The office said that the areas in northern Gaza are still suffering from a real food crisis and that the only way to stop the famine in northern Gaza and address the food crisis across the whole enclave is to open all crossings”.

Since the start of April, no more than 2,800 trucks have entered the enclave, according to the media office.

“The occupation deliberately lies about the humanitarian reality inside the Gaza Strip, and has been promoting a false narrative for some time about improvements in the mechanism of bringing aid in and increasing the number of trucks entering the Strip” the statement read.

“This was denied by the World Food Programme, when it announced last Thursday that only 392 aid trucks loaded with food had entered the Gaza Strip during the month of April.

The media office said its numbers were in line with the UN, which confirmed in a post on the X platform that only 392 trucks loaded with food have arrived since the beginning of April.

Indeed, not much change if any on the aid tracker


And these aren't all humanitarian trucks either, about 10% is from the private sector.
The average for the past 7 days is 181 a day (163 humanitarian)
Same as the week before 182 a day (164 humanitarian)

Actually the 250 from yesterday, 73 are for the private sector, 177 humanitarian trucks. The 'spikes' are mostly extra trucks for the private sector.

The Gaza Health Ministry says that an ambulance driver, Muhammad Awadallah Muhammad Musa, 50 years old, was killed by “occupation bullets” near the village of as-Sawiya, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

The office says he was heading to the village to transport those who were injured in a settler attack there.

In a video verified by Al Jazeera, Musa’s colleague Bashar Qaryouti said that as they headed to the village to retrieve the wounded, they were directly fired on by settlers. It was in this shooting that Musa was killed, he said.

And hospitals

Israeli forces raid West Bank hospital

Health Ministry updates death toll from Nur Shams raid

Wounded rushed to hospital after Israeli strike on Bureij refugee camp

Wounded Palestinians are brought to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah after an Israeli attack on Bureij refugee camp.

Casualties and injuries were reported after the attack

Two Palestinians killed in Israeli strike near Khan Younis: Report

What started as families of the captives [held in Gaza by Hamas and other groups] calling for the immediate return of the captives has turned much more political in nature. They’ve been chanting “elections now” and “down with the government”.

There are also smaller, anti-war protests; they’ve all congregated here in central Tel Aviv, just down from the Ministry of Defence.

We saw one woman pass with a placard that read “occupation and democracy cannot coexist” and others calling for things like “bring them back at any cost”.

People here feel that they haven’t been heard. They feel that they’ve been abandoned. There’s concern for the fate of the captives. How many remain alive? Nothing is clear. So, people here are telling us that they want a captive deal immediately.

Many also believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that his political career will more than likely be over once the focus moves away from the war. They believe that he is extending things for the sake of his political survival.

Axios, citing three US sources, reports that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to announce sanctions against the Israeli military’s ‘Netzah Yehuda’ battalion for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank within days.

The news outlet said It would mark the first time the US has imposed sanctions on an Israeli military unit.

The sources told Axios that the sanctions would prevent the battalion and its members from receiving any kind of US military assistance or training.

The male-only Netzah Yehuda battalion was formed in 1999 as a special unit for ultra-orthodox soldiers. Its website states that around a thousand soldiers serve in the unit at any one time.

Axios states that the unit stationed in the West Bank has “became a destination for many ‘Hilltop Youth’ — young radical right-wing settlers who weren’t accepted into any other combat unit”.

The Israeli prime minister reacted in an X post to reports that the US will sanction a unit of the Israeli army in the coming days.

“At a time when our soldiers are fighting the monsters of terror, the intention to impose a sanction on a unit in the [army] is the height of absurdity and a moral low. The government headed by me will act by all means against these moves,” Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu also said that he has been working against the imposition of sanctions on Israeli citizens, adding that this is something he spoke about with United States officials. The US and European Union imposed sanctions this week on extremist Israeli settlers accused of violent actions in the occupied West Bank.

The House has voted to provide Israel with $26 billion in emergency assistance, including almost $14 billion in unconditional military aid. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the approval of billions of dollars in new military aid showed strong support for Israel and “defends Western civilization”.

In a post on X, he said: “The US Congress just overwhelmingly passed a much appreciated aid bill that demonstrates strong bipartisan support for Israel and defends Western civilization. Thank you friends, thank you America!”

The bill allocates $26.38bn to “support Israel in its effort to defend itself against Iran and its proxies”, as well as reimbursing US military operations in response to recent attacks.

The funding includes:

• $5.2bn to replenish and expand Israel’s missile and rocket defence system
• $3.5bn for purchasing advanced weapons systems
• $1bn to enhance weapons production
• $4.4bn for other supplies and services to Israel
• $9.2bn in humanitarian aid

How much of that humanitarian aid will Israel spend on Gaza... So far they've only been blocking and slowing down aid coming from other countries and the UN.

The Israeli prime minister reacted in an X post to reports that the US will sanction a unit of the Israeli army in the coming days.

“At a time when our soldiers are fighting the monsters of terror, the intention to impose a sanction on a unit in the [army] is the height of absurdity and a moral low. The government headed by me will act by all means against these moves,” Benjamin Netanyahu said.

We reported earlier on the possible sanctions, which will be against the Israeli military’s “Netzah Yehuda” battalion for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank within days. Netanyahu also said that he has been working against the imposition of sanctions on Israeli citizens, adding that this is something he spoke about with United States officials.

The US and European Union imposed sanctions this week on extremist Israeli settlers accused of violent actions in the occupied West Bank.

We’ve gotten quite a bit of Israeli reaction tonight all the way from the top.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the US decision, saying that he and his government would act against these sanctions [and that they were] “absurd and morally incorrect”.

We’re also hearing from war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz. He’s usually at odds with the Israeli prime minister. They’ve had a history of disagreements throughout this war but they seem to be in consensus this time, saying that this unit is an inseparable part of the Israeli military.

We’re also hearing from members of the far right, Ben Gvir and Smotrich, known ultra-nationalists who are saying that the move can not happen. This is a unit of the army that is specifically in the occupied West Bank that is for ultra-orthodox men. They have certain religious guidelines.

One US non-profit documented their human rights abuses from the year 2015 onwards and the list of violations is long. Reports within Israeli media say that this unit of the army is directly involved with the settler enterprise and the people… in it are members of the Hilltop Youth Movement, an ultra-nationalist violence settler group in the occupied West Bank who often set up these illegal outposts on Palestinian land.

US decision to sanction Israeli military unit ‘sets a dangerous precedent’: Gantz

Not happy with 12 (out of 15) votes for Palestine at the UNSC either

Israel to summon ambassadors of countries that voted for Palestinian UN membership

Palestinian presidency condemns US military aid for Israel

_{Pro-Palestinian activists demonstrate outside the Capitol in Washington, DC, Saturday}

Three Palestinians have been killed and others injured as a result of the Israeli bombing of a house in the Shaboura camp in the centre of the city of Rafah, the Wafa news agency reports.

Among the dead are a child and a pregnant woman. At least five children were injured and arrived at the Kuwait Specialty Hospital in Rafah.

Earlier, we reported that six children were among at least nine people killed in Israeli air raids that hit two homes in the Tal as-Sultan and al-Salam neighbourhoods of Rafah on Saturday.


_{A young Palestinian mourns over the bodies of children killed in an Israeli bombing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday}

Humanitarian missions impeded, delayed by Israeli authorities: UN

Today, two-thirds of coordinated humanitarian missions in #Gaza were impeded or significantly delayed by the Israeli authorities.

On average, each of these missions faced nearly five hours of delay before being allowed to proceed. #AccessDenied

1/3 pic.twitter.com/9lizj9PCwa

— OCHA OPT (Palestine) (@ochaopt) April 20, 2024

Israeli raids on Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank


<sub>People transport the body of a Palestinian who was killed in an Israeli raid at Nur Shams camp to a hospital in Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank


Israeli soldiers inside an army bulldozer during an Israeli army operation in Nur Shams camp</sub>

Tulkarem governor: Israeli raid ‘part of ongoing crime against our people’

Al-Quds Bridages claim attack on Israeli army checkpoint in West Bank